


Simply Divine

by satonawall



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:32:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2571638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satonawall/pseuds/satonawall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://glee-kink-meme.livejournal.com/48822.html?thread=62923702">GKM fill</a>: Brittany is the daughter of Eros and Psyche and curious to learn about the mortal world. Santana doesn't care about Greek mythology, but she'll soon care about Brittany.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simply Divine

The morning of her daughter's eighteenth birthday, Psyche almost went back on her word.

She'd promised, of course, and at the time she had fully intended to keep her promise. Eros, always the one with the happy-go-lucky attitude and a very fascinating brand of naïveté for a god of love, was going to allow it even if she changed her mind and said no, naturally, but Psyche would find a way to prevent his approval from mattering one bit.

Her intentions were very firm when she tiptoed into Brittany's bedchamber to gather the strength to break her little girl's heart, for Brittany's own good. But already the sight of her daughter asleep, golden hair spread over the pillow and her foot sticking out from under the covers, making those quiet sniffling sounds in her sleep that Psyche could swear were adorable, and not just because they came from her daughter, began to eat away at the firmness of her decision.

Her husband had always been completely and utterly incompetent at denying their younger daughter anything, and Psyche had only ever managed to deny her one thing with the very promise she had been so intent on breaking.

And then Brittany began to slowly wake up, stretching on her bed while her eyes were still closed before a wide grin overtook her face as she opened her eyes and spotted her mother.

At that moment, Psyche knew that she could never deny Brittany what she had already been promised.

Unfortunately, that was also the moment she realised what a fool she'd been to coerce everyone Brittany interacted with - most notably Eros himself, and what a battle that had been - to promise that they would not overwhelm the child with talk of fornication and orgies and everything the Olympus was famous for. She thought the family had enough notoriety for that sort of thing already, without her late-in-immortality baby adding to that. With Hedone as her sister and Eros as her father, it was indeed a great achievement on Psyche's part that Brittany remained largely innocent, aside from her father's frequent but vague comments on how much she'd come to enjoy sex, when it was time. Many a time, Psyche's glaring had been the only thing keeping Eros from answering Brittany's excited question of ‘What is sex, father?' with something more graphic than ‘You'll come to know, my dear girl, and when you do, remember that your father was not the one keeping you from finding out sooner'.

It was too late now. Her Brittany was due to leave to explore the mortal world any hour now, all by her lonesome, and by the excited look on Brittany's face as she moved to hug her mother good morning, she wouldn't waste her time for long goodbyes.

Psyche could only hope that something of her father's powers of attraction had passed on to Brittany to help her navigate the world of the mortals without having to suffer trials comparable to those of her mother.

\---

Santana hated everything.

She hated her professors who'd kept her hard at work for so many weeks, she hated her boss at Spotlight Diner who'd offered her shifts on all the times Santana had happened to have free for about an equally long time, she hated her bank account for being in if not desperate, then at least a small need of the money those shifts gave her, she hated herself for being too weak to resist bodycon dresses that looked absolutely smashing on her and the temptation of quality tequila, both of whom were making a rather noticeable dent in her bank account in the first place.

But most of all, in that moment, she hated her roommate Kurt who'd sexiled her for a little Friday afternoon delight turned dinner-with-dick-as-dessert turned probably-an-all-nighter-oh-god with his new crush slash probably-a-boyfriend-by-now-that-romantic-fucker.

And also her English professor for having had an assignment due that day so that Santana had had to pull an all-nighter of the squeaky clean kind the previous night to turn it in on time.

There were only so many things a broke college student could do, even in New York City, at eight pm on a Friday when she was too tired to party and too pissed off to enjoy any other form of social contact.

Walking home was one of them, though. She had pepper spray in her bag and razor blades in her hair, plus a very fit body that could outrun trouble and just the right state of mind to not care about ensuring she wouldn't walk into any.

She couldn't yell at Kurt until Bowties McGellerson left, which probably would only be the next morning, because they had a pact about embarrassing potential significant others only after they were permanent enough not to run, and Kurt had honoured his part of it admirably.

What she could do, though, was to take out her aggressions out on any and all people she ran into on her way home.

Like a couple of fuckwits in their car trailing after a woman.

"Give you thirty dollars!" Fuckwit #1 was shouting as "For the night."

"Don't be a cheap bastard, Will," Fuckwit #2 said with a look Santana didn't like. "The lady's clearly worth at least a forty."

"What's a dollar?" the woman asked, turning to face the car. "Is it like dinner?"

The Fuckwits laughed.

"Oh you can _eat_ me anytime you like," Fuckwit #1 said.

Santana's blood was boiling. She was going to have enough horny men to deal with for the night already; she didn't need to hear lewd comments that lacked all respect for their respondent.

"And you can go to hell and leave her the fuck alone," she shouted at the Fuckwits, walking up to the woman and glaring into the car.

"And she had a friend!" Fuckwit #1 looked excited, and Santana could easily see what he was thinking as his eyes took in Santana's body. "Always like that hot Lati-"

"The only thing you'll be liking is your smashed face if you don't leave right now," Santana said. "I've got your licence plate written down and it just so happens that I know a great deal of cops who'd love to brighten your futures with a nice little sentence for harassment."

She didn't, but she hadn't tried her hand in acting during high school for nothing. The Fuckwits shouted some more, but they did so while driving away, allowing Santana to let out a deep breath and focus on the woman she'd inadvertently ended up helping out.

She was a blonde, very pretty, dressed up in some sort of tunic, with just flimsy sandals for shoes. For some reason Santana couldn't quite explain, she felt her annoyance wither away at the sight.

"Sorry if you were actually looking for customers," she said. "Those prices were definitely too low, though, so I doubt it'd mean much either way. You could do a lot better."

The woman, or a girl maybe, she couldn't be much older than Santana herself, didn't look like a pro, though. It was something about the expression. Santana found it hard to believe she'd ever walked a street late at night in her entire life.

Right now, the woman seemed confused more than anything, like she had no idea what had just happened.

"I still don't know what a dollar is," she said, giving Santana a smile. " _Does_ it have anything to do with dinner?"

"Well, enough dollars can buy you a dinner." Santana tried to size her up without looking like she was doing it. "It's what we call the money here."

The woman's smile brightened a lot, like she was actually glad for the answer, and she jumped a little. "Is that the sign they have in all the signs at the market?"

"Yeah, I think so." Feeling utterly foolish, Santana drew the dollar sign into the air for the woman to see. "Like that?"

"Just like that." The woman turned her head to the side, like she was sizing up Santana as well. "You're really nice. Most vendors just told me to go away, except for one who gave me three apples and said I could go back for more if I was hungry the next time she was selling them." She smiled really wide then and offered Santana her hand. "I'm Brittany, daughter of Eros and Psyche."

Santana took the offered hand, reflex winning over confusion. "Santana. Lopez. Daughter of other people called Lopez." She frowned slightly. "Are you in a cult or something, or are your parents just the world's most persistent hippies?"

"I'm from Mount Olympus," Brittany said. "Except I really wanted to go away and see the world, and Hermes said that New York would be a great place to start, he has his shoes made here. Do you know if Old York is as nice?"

So, a cult then. Santana had prevented a recently escaped member of the world's most bizarre neo-ancient Greek cult, which apparently was close enough to New York for Brittany to make it here without dirtying her sandals, from potentially accidentally prostituting herself on her first night away from her cult. If all her career plans failed, at least she'd have a fabulous New York story to tell until eternity.

"I think it's just called York," Santana said. "And I don't know much about it, but it's in England and apparently England is all rain and tea, so let's just say that I prefer the New York."

And since the universe had just given her a two-minute break from constantly reminding her how much it hated her, it began to drizzle.

"Ah crap." Santana looked down at her clothes, which were not exactly the definition of waterproof. "I need to go. You should probably head home, too. Those fuckwits are not the only people with potential to bother you out here."

"I don't know where's home," Brittany said, sounding surprisingly chipper at the idea. "Or I do, but I just left there and I wouldn't like to go back."

Right. Just escaped from a cult.

Why hadn't anyone told Santana that fabulous New York stories were significantly less fabulous when they involved the real lives of real people and the very real consequences of leaving them fend for themselves at 8 pm on a Friday night in the rain?

"Fuck." The words came out of her mind before she had thought them through properly. "Do you want to come with me for the night? It'll get pretty cold out here if you've got nothing but that tunic."

Brittany's face lit up. "Yes! You're really great, Santana."

Luckily, they were not too far off, otherwise Brittany would probably have got blisters. Maybe Santana should point her in the direction of a shoe shop in the morning. Or perhaps even take her there, her hard work had paid off in the form of a completely free weekend, the first one in almost two months.

Damn. She was getting invested already. Sometimes she really missed the cold-hearted and closeted bitch she'd been in high school.

Well, she didn't. But sometimes she wished she did.

There was just something about the woman, about Brittany, that made her care, plain and simple. Maybe it was that Brittany was undeniably smoking hot, and Santana hadn't had very much time to search for sex partners after she and Dani had broken up. But there was something about Brittany's face, about her words, that just made Santana want to look out for her. Perhaps she was a recently escaped cult member, perhaps she'd just got really in over her head at a toga party and would wake up tomorrow in a strange apartment wondering how the fuck she got there, but whatever it was, she wasn't lying to Santana; she utterly and completely believed what she was saying right then. Santana didn't trust people easily, so realising that she was trusting Brittany not to be trying to get into gullible people's homes to rob them (not that she had much valuables to rob; all those fancy clothes Kurt had probably were worth something, but he always locked his door because he ‘didn't trust you, Santana, not after the whipped cream incident') was a bit disconcerting.

She'd better make an effort to keep up her guard.

That was easier said and done, though, when Brittany reached for her hand and linked up her pinky with Santana's.

"I've always wanted to do that," she said. "My father always said that humans hold hands when they like each other."

Santana was confused enough over the word ‘humans' in such a context not to correct Brittany on how hands were properly held.

"So, humans," she said after a small pause that she'd used to try and get her head around the new piece of information. "What did your father say you were then?"

Perhaps she could try googling the cult, find out what kind of people they were and if Brittany maybe had any way to contact family outside of it.

Fuck, she was doing it again.

"My dad is a god," Brittany said. "He always said humans know his name very well. He's Eros."

Right. What sort of a sick fuck named himself after the god of love?

"I'm just a demi-god, though," Brittany went on. "My mum was a human, but then she became a goddess because she loved my dad so much."

"Of course you are." Try as she might, she couldn't give her tone its usual sarcastic edge. "Do you want to talk more about them?"

"No, not really." Brittany made a few small dance moves that nevertheless didn't pull her pinky away from Santana's. "I came here to get to see this world. Maybe later. Would you tell me about your parents?" A thought seemed to strike her that made her more pensive. "Will they be okay with a sleepover without being asked first? My mum always wanted to know who I slept with."

"Smart woman." Santana dearly hoped Brittany was just so innocent that she didn't realise the words ‘sleep with' had a different meaning as well. "Don't worry about that. I don't live with my parents. But my roommate is going to be pissed because we're arriving in the middle of his sexathon."

"Is it a marathon, except with sex?"

"Yeah. He's got a new-" Were neo-ancient Greek cults as uptight about sexuality as Christian ones seemed to be? It would be a great irony, considering their source material, but Santana had never got the impression that cults particularly cared about logic. "...person, to have it with, and I bet they're going to go at it all night. Sorry in advance, it gets pretty loud."

"Maybe he can tell me what sex is, then."

It was only with a great effort that Santana did not stop dead on her tracks.

"What sort of a cult was it?" she asked, out loud but mostly at herself.

It didn't seem like Brittany had really heard her, anyway.

"My dad always said that sex is wonderful, but my mum wouldn't let him or my sister tell me what it is."

Huh. It was probably better that way, Santana assumed. If she could actually trust Brittany's words to mean no one had ever done anything to her, that was. Something pretty fishy had definitely gone down.

She was surprised to realise she sort of wanted to put a blanket around Brittany and a mug of hot chocolate in her hand before maybe giving her a hug. Whatever had happened, it was pretty obvious Brittany was going to have at least some trouble coming to terms with what life outside of her cult was like.

"It is wonderful," she said, her voice sounding oddly gentle to her own ears, "but only if you both like what you're doing." She thought about the person who she'd been for most of her high school years and wanted to burst out laughing. "Your mum might have had the right idea about waiting to find out about it."

"Does your roommate like what he's doing with his person?"

"Uh, yeah." Santana snorted. "A little too much. Don't say I didn't warn you. Twice." A thought struck her. Loud sex was a game two people could play. "Could you do me a favour? It's nothing big, I promise, but you can crash on my couch even if you say no."

Brittany nodded, like she was excited to be helpful, and Santana explained her idea.

\---

They got to Santana and Kurt's apartment soon after, meeting Kurt and Blaine the boy toy slash boyfriend in the kitchen, dressed up in shirts and trousers but conspicuously lacking socks and any form of scarf or bowtie or even regular tie, which was a good enough indicator of what they had been doing before they started to wash and dry dishes in perfect unison like a Stepford couple in the making. (Definitely more boyfriend than boy toy, and if Santana hadn't been so pissed about the sex, she'd have been the smallest bit envious.)

"Oh hi, Kurt," Santana said loudly, her arm swung casually around Brittany's shoulders. "Blaine. Wow, looks like it's gonna get a little crowded here."

"I told you I had plans first!" Kurt's answer was just on the delightful side of indignant; he wasn't going to do anything but bark tonight.

"That's what my winged horse always says," Brittany said. "You'd think he does it on purpose."

"Don't be rude, Kurt." Santana gave him her most annoying smile. "There's plenty of room for all four of us. We won't even have to worry about extra beds."

She let her fingers slide down Brittany's arm before moving them to Brittany's side and pulling her a little closer. Ignoring how nice and right it felt, she led Brittany into her room and closed the door with a meaningful look at Kurt.

Brittany stopped to look around at Santana's room, a look of awe on her face, but Santana removed her arm from around Brittany and crossed the room quickly, reaching to fetch a DVD from under her bed and opening her laptop to get it playing. That accomplished, she amped up the volume to her satisfaction.

It only took half a minute or so for the casual sounds of dishwashing to completely die down, and another for Kurt's muffled apologies to become audible.

Santana grinned at Brittany who grinned back without realising why the gross DVD of for-straight-men lesbian porn that Dani had given Santana as a gag gift last Christmas was so incredibly funny.

After that, though, it took Santana only a very short time to realise the fault in her plan, namely that having made Kurt believe she was in the process of having sex with Brittany, she couldn't very well make up the living room couch for Brittany to sleep on without giving up the whole thing.

"Uh," she said, looking down at her own queen size bed. "I swear I wasn't planning on this, I really just wanted to give you a roof over your head tonight, but is it okay if we share a bed? Just... Just sleeping, I swear, there's plenty of room, I just didn't think this prank through."

"Of course." Brittany skipped over to the bed and sat down at the edge next to Santana. "You're a really good person, Santana. I trust you."

Santana couldn't help the laugh. "You're the first person ever to call me a good person."

"People can be like that." Brittany leaned towards her to whisper in her ear, like she was sharing a great secret. "A lot of them are really dumb a lot."

Santana giggled and told herself she wasn't allowed to enjoy the feel of Brittany's breath on her skin as much as she did. "Pretty much yeah."

"What else do people do on beds?" Brittany asked as Santana had got up to search for something for Brittany to sleep in. "I used to read on mine sometimes, but I don't know anything else."

Santana felt blood rushing to her cheeks, and she resolutely looked into her closet as she answered. "Beds are usually- You can also have sex on them."

"Okay."

She wasn't looking, so she didn't know what Brittany's expression was like when she said the word, but Santana really should stop thinking about Brittany thinking about sex anyway.

Finally, she emerged from her closet with a matching pair of t-shirt and sleeping shorts with kittens on them. (It had been a completely non-ironic gift from Rachel Berry.) Santana had meant to throw them away multiple times, seeing that they really weren't her style, but just the sight of Brittany in them made her glad she hadn't. She changed into her sleepwear as well, trying to pick something a little less suggestive than her usual fare (so what if usually she was the only person to see them; a woman had all the right to admire her smoking hot body in whatever she pleased in the mirror before going to bed, okay?) and loaned Brittany her hairbrush while she tried to spread out Brittany's damp tunic a little so that it would dry better during the night.

After that, she slipped under covers, and Brittany soon followed suit. It felt odd sleeping with another person without having actually slept with them (not that Santana had done much of platonic sleeping with most of the people she'd slept with), but then Brittany inched a little closer and whispered, "Thank you, Santana. Goodnight" and somehow, suddenly, Santana felt a lot more confident about the whole thing.

That didn't mean she didn't stay up before finally managing to fall asleep around eleven. Then again, she could also blame that on the fact that tiring as her week had been, it hadn't been so tiring that she'd fall asleep before nine anyway.

\---

It was warmer than it usually was when she woke up. In her sleep-addled state, it took Santana a few seconds to remember what she'd done last night.

She'd brought home a stranger. And not even to have sex with her. A stranger who was now spooning her like that was completely normal.

"Are you having a seizure?" Brittany asked, voice full of concern. "You went all funny and rigid."

"No, I'm okay." Santana forced herself to relax a little and shifted so that she wasn't so obviously in Brittany's arms but instead faced her. "Have you been awake for long?"

"I think so." Brittany smiled at her, completely oblivious to Santana's mental turmoil. "It was really nice and warm under the covers so I didn't want to bother you."

With Brittany's smile like that, Santana could understand herself of twelve hours before a lot better. Brittany was still as disarming in the morning in bed as she'd been outside in the evening.

She pushed the covers off herself. "Are you hungry?"

"A little." Brittany was completely still and expressionless for a moment, as if she was thinking, or maybe feeling around her stomach. "A lot, maybe. I only ate those apples the nice lady at the market gave me yesterday."

Santana took a deep breath, but hopefully Brittany didn't notice. Right. Homeless ex-cult member without friends in the city. Back to the adult stuff right away first thing in the morning.

"Let's go get us some breakfast, then," was what she said out loud, offering her hand for Brittany to get out of the bed.

Brittany came easily, but instead of standing up and letting go of Santana's hand, she used the momentum to lean into Santana and wrap her arms around her in a very sweet and surprisingly intimate hug.

"Thank you, Santana. You're the best human I've ever met."

"If ‘humans' means people outside your little group, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one you've really met," Santana said, but it was so quietly she wasn't sure if Brittany was even listening.

She sat Brittany down at the kitchen table and began opening cupboards.

"Do you like toast?"

Brittany blinked. "What's toast?"

"It's-" If this was how this was going to go, Santana was going to be ace at any and all word-explaining games very soon. "Bread, except sliced and sort of burned a little? I guess."

She pulled out the plastic bag and showed Brittany. "And this is the toaster," she said, pointing at the appliance in question. "You put these squares in and they come out crispier."

"Is it good?"

"I dig it." She popped two in. "How about you try and tell me?"

They went through the same thing with cornflakes, but Brittany was luckily familiar with yoghurt, which she asked to eat with honey. Santana didn't have any, but Kurt did, and what Kurt didn't know wouldn't prompt him into a hissy fit. It turned out Brittany really liked toast, and Santana watched her as she ate four slices (Brittany really hadn't been kidding about having eaten very little the day before, she thought). She also took the opportunity to clandestinely try to size up Brittany's body, and came into the conclusion that whatever the cult had been on, starvation regime wasn't it. Brittany seemed to be on the thinner side, yes, but the sort of definition her arms had would come from muscle, not hunger, and the same applied to her legs.

She was just in the process of trying to think of something distracting for Brittany to do while Santana googled all of that shit when-

"Santana!"

Kurt didn't really shout more as he whispered in a way that very clearly showed he would have been shouting if he wasn't trying to keep his voice down.

"You knew I had plans with Blaine!"

Santana showed her teeth as she smiled. "And I made some of my own," she said. "Big deal, get over it."

"We have a deal," Kurt said, his lowered voice clashing horribly with the indignation clear on him. "You're not supposed to embarrass my-"

"The pact goes both ways, should I remind you." Santana nodded meaningfully at Brittany. "Let's see our nightly visitors out and you can try and yell at me then."

Kurt looked at Brittany like he hadn't even noticed her before, and primly nodded before starting to make breakfast. Santana's eyes drifted back to Brittany, who was smiling at her like she knew Santana loved to get on Kurt's nerves in all the small ways, and it took her a much longer time than usually to realise Kurt was not making any regular breakfast.

No. He was putting the toast on plates and everything, and he'd taken out the good glasses. Not to mention he was arranging it all onto a tray.

"Ooh, so you're now the type of boots-knockers who do breakfast in bed?"

"Shut up, Santana," Kurt said, but his ears were burning. "He's started bringing me coffee whenever we share a morning class, and I don't want him to think that I don't-"

"Appreciate the ridiculous schmoop?" Santana arched her eyebrow. "Kurt, the man washed dishes with you. He looked at you all lovey-dovey while your hands were full of wilted salad. It's a pretty sure thing for you." Kurt muttered something that she couldn't really make out. "Now get out of my face while I entertain."

Kurt shot her a dirty look, but he went his merry way and Santana got to turn her attention fully back to Brittany.

She was looking significantly less chipper than when Santana had looked away the last time.

"You want me to leave, don't you?" Brittany asked, poking at the banana Santana had offered her. "You said I could stay the night and the night is over."

Santana took a deep breath. That was probably as good an opening to the discussion as she was ever going to get.

"Do you have any place to go?" she asked. "Any friends in the city?"

Brittany shook her head. "Hermes said he'd visit me at some point, but he still lives on the Olympus. I just wanted to see myself what the human world was like."

"Tell you what," Santana said before she could overthink it. "Why don't you stay here for the weekend at least, and I'll help you to get a better grip on the human world. It's not a really nice one, you can't just go wandering around like that, especially if you don't have a place to sleep."

Brittany brightened instantly, and this time, Santana guessed it was coming before Brittany's arms were around her shoulders. She hugged back, pulling Brittany closer and letting out a sigh into Brittany's hair.

"Okay," she said when they'd let go of each other, "step one. Did you have anything with you but your tunic?"

"I had a bag, but I didn't pack much."

"Well, let's see that then."

She led Brittany back to her room. It was probably too much to hope that Brittany's bag would contain any sort of identity papers, and Santana had absolutely no clue how people actually lived without them. Then again, she thought with a sigh, with Brittany's looks that wouldn't be as crucial, at least in the beginning.

Brittany emptied her bag onto Santana's bed, and it didn't take long for Santana to browse through the contents. No papers of any kind, as she'd suspected, a few rocks that looked like Brittany had picked them off the side of the road, a large piece of surprisingly nice fabric that Santana assumed was a scarf, a small sculpture of a very fat cat that Brittany very seriously told her was called Lord Tubbington, and a small but heavy bundle of fabric.

"What's this?" Santana asked as she picked it up after politely putting pretending to shake Lord Tubbington's stony paw (Brittany had insisted).

"My mother gave it to me," Brittany said. "She said it would be useful."

Useful in real world or in bizarro cult world, Santana wanted to ask but didn't.

Carefully, she opened the knots keeping the bundle in piece, and promptly dropped the whole thing out of shock as she got a look at its contents.

The coins spilled all over her bed, and some even rolled to the edge and fell on the floor with a metallic click.

They looked old, and Santana didn't always know her metals but even if they were like copper or nickel or whatever, they looked a lot like the ancient Greek coins she'd seen on TV and they had to be valuable.

"Sorry," she said, trying to mask her astonishment. "A little clumsy in the morning."

"Are they useful?" Brittany asked. "My mother told me to use them wisely, but she never taught me how to use money so I don't really know. Could I pay the nice lady with apples back with what I have?"

"Yeah," Santana said, her mouth dry. "And then some."

They gathered up the coins, but all the while Santana's mind was on their next move.

It occurred to her, briefly, that maybe Brittany had stolen the coins, but as she glanced at Brittany, she couldn't believe it. Or if Brittany had, it had been from her cult, and given the state Brittany had waltzed into her life, Santana didn't give a crap if Brittany had relieved her old friends of a fortune; she'd definitely deserved the money for what had happened to her. She did have a moral code, of sorts, but even her conscience had no problem agreeing to regard the coins as rightfully Brittany's. Still, she reminded herself, someone might be looking for them, so they should probably keep it hush hush.

In any case, what they needed now was information.

And a distraction, because Santana wasn't quite sure if she wanted Brittany reading behind her back while she googled ‘a list of prices for ancient Greek coins'.

"I noticed you don't have a cell phone," she said once the coins were safely back in the bundle, safe for one which Santana had pocketed for research and comparison purposes when Brittany wasn't looking. "Do you want to check out mine?"

Brittany let out an excited squeal before calming down a little to ask, "What's a cell phone?"

"It's this thing that you can use to speak or write to your friends who are not with you right then," Santana said as she reached for her iPhone. "But actually, I was thinking you might like a couple of the games I've got here."

She showed Brittany Angry Birds and Candy Crush, mentally crossing her fingers either one would be interesting enough for Brittany to forget about what Santana was doing for like half an hour. Brittany felt bad directing birds at pigs and breaking down really nice structures that they'd built with hard work, as she explained, but she liked the colours of Candy Crush and the sound effects made her smile happily whenever she got points, so Santana left her to play while she quietly reached for her laptop.

Some three or fourteen searches later, she was having a hard time containing her own smile. It probably should have been alarming that she was currently housing a veritable fortune under her nightstand where they'd stashed Brittany's bag, but instead it was just exciting. With money like that, Brittany could rent an apartment, and live comfortably while she learnt about how the world worked outside of her cult.

Without any effort, Santana's mind put her there right next to Brittany, telling her about all kinds of stuff from using the metro and grocery shopping to which trashy TV shows were the best to hate watch, and she didn't even bother getting horrified at how invested she'd become in Brittany's life in such a short amount of time.

She did a few more searches on how to go about selling your expensive antiques before closing her laptop and crawling over to where Brittany was leaning against the wall, her finger working at the touch screen with gusto.

"Game going well?"

"I've got so many points already, look!" Brittany pointed at the edge of the screen, moving the phone so that Santana could see better.

"Wow," Santana said. "You're soon going to beat my top score."

"What's that mean?"

"You're better than me at this game, Britts," Santana said, reaching for a pillow to get a more comfortable position to watch Brittany play.

Brittany flashed her a bright smile and moved to rest against Santana's side so that they were practically cuddling on the bed.

"What were you doing?" she asked as she began playing again. "You looked really excited but I couldn't see what you were reading. It looked weird."

"I was looking into your coins," Santana said. "I think your mother had the right idea about them. You should definitely sell a few of them."

"But isn't money used to pay for buying?" Brittany looked at her with wide, open eyes, so very trusting and open, and Santana wanted to hug her.

"Usually, yeah, but the money your mum gave you, it's really old, and so rare that some people like to collect it. If you sell it, you can get a lot of that money that's used for buying things."

Brittany seemed to think for a while as she effortlessly continued playing at the same time.

"Will you abandon me when I have so much money that I don't need to share your bed and eat your toast?" she asked finally, the corners of her mouth angled downwards like she was bracing for an answer she wouldn't like.

This time, Santana did give in to the urge to gently put her arms around Brittany's torso, one sneaking between her and the wall and the other going between Brittany's stomach and her arms, coming to rest a little under her breasts so that Santana could comfortably rest her head at Brittany's shoulder.

She didn't know how a disturbed cult could have produced someone so pure and sweet and precious, or how such a person had somehow crossed paths with Santana, but she was not about to question any of it.

"Of course not," she said. "But when you'll have money, you probably shouldn't tell too many people that you have it. Or that you have those coins. Most people, when they hear that someone has money, they will try to take advantage or steal it or something. Be careful, Brittany."

Brittany tilted her head. "Are you going to steal my coins?"

"No." She hoped she did look as genuinely sincere as she felt. It wasn't a look she used a lot. "Here, there's the one I took so that I could compare it to pictures."

Brittany smiled as she handed over the coin, but it wasn't at the coin but at Santana. "Can I stay here, now that I have money and I can pay for it?"

 Santana bit her lip. She thought of Brittany's smile, and how she definitely wouldn't mind waking up to it in the morning. She and Kurt could use someone who showed affection in other ways than snarky jokes and bringing the other their favourite Ben & Jerry's from the freezer without being asked to when the other was having a bad day.

"Now that you are going to have money," she said, "I think it'd be best if you got your own place, Brittany."

Brittany's smile died and her body curled up, like she was trying to shrink herself. She didn't push away Santana's arms, though.

"You don't want me around," Brittany said, her bottom lip protruding miserably.

"I do!" Santana cuddled closer to Brittany without even having to think about it. "I do, it's just that this place isn't very big and I'm not sure if my roommate's up for impromptu roommates out of the blue." Brittany didn't look convinced. "We can still be friends even though we won't live together," Santana said, removing her arm from Brittany's front and moving her hand up to cradle Brittany's cheek. "Actually, think about how much better it'll be. When you get your own place, we can hang out, just the two of us, without fearing that Kurt'll bring in his boyfriend and we'll have to listen to them go at it in the other room. It'll be just us when I visit you. We'll have so much more room, and we can have sleepovers and try out all the breakfast foods without anyone interrupting us. Wouldn't you like that?"

Brittany pursed her lips. "I think I would."

"And we can get you a cell phone, too," Santana continued, "so that we can call and text whenever we want. And if you don't live here, it'll be easier for you to invite over all the other friends you're going to make soon as well."

"Do you promise you're going to be my friend?" Brittany asked.

"I promise."

Brittany's smile appeared suddenly, but it was bright and warm and Santana felt her stomach make a flip.

"Do friends kiss each other?"

"Not... not usually," Santana said, furrowing her brow and trying not to look at Brittany's lips. "How so?"

"Because I've never kissed anyone and I want to kiss you."

Fuck.

Santana kept on a small smile so as to not scare Brittany with her expressions, but inside, she mostly wanted to groan.

She wanted to kiss Brittany, that much was obvious. But Brittany was still homeless and relying on Santana to help her and recently escaped from a cult that had done god knows what to her, and Santana might have been a bitch but she didn't take advantage of others. Not like that.

"Why?"

"Because you're really beautiful and very kind and I feel butterflies when I see you smile," Brittany said like it was obvious.

Santana smiled and preened at the compliment before realising that it didn't make her feel any better about being Brittany's first kiss.

"Ummm, thanks." She glanced down at the bed. "I'm really flattered. But I don't think it'd be such a good idea."

Brittany tilted her head to the side, incidentally to the side where Santana's hand was still holding her cheek and as a result, Santana's thumb moved across Brittany's cheek like a caress. Santana really couldn't make herself feel too sorry about that.

"Are you still afraid of being a dolphin?"

Santana frowned, but it probably looked rather stupid because she hadn't managed to stop smiling. "What?"

"It's okay if you are," Brittany said. "I can wait."

At any rate, it got her to quit the subject of kissing, so Santana counted it as a win.

"We should probably get someone who knows antiques to look at your coins to tell us how much they're worth," she said after a moment of silence. "Otherwise we'll get ripped off by an antiquities dealer no doubt."

"Aren't antiquities those things you put in your soup to make it taste good?"

"No," Santana said. She had the distinct feeling that if the question had been asked by someone in her history class, she'd have laughed so hard she fell off her chair, but she pushed that feeling away. "They're old things. There're some in museums and some people collect them and are willing to pay for them, so they can be really valuable."

Santana had been mentally prepared to find out that every single person in New York who was offering services in the art of appraising ancient Greek artefacts would be unavailable during the weekend, but New York truly was a city that never slept because a quick Google search gave her multiple places to try.

It would probably be best to get Brittany some cash as soon as possible, she thought and suggested that they go and see a woman about coins right then. No time like the present and all.

Brittany jumped off the bed eagerly and reached for her sandals.

"Do you want to borrow some of my clothing?" Santana asked. "The- umm, I mean," Brittany's clothes would make her stick around a bit even in New York, and Santana didn't really want to make an impression on this type of visit. "Those kinds of people are usually really stuck-up and shallow, so they might think it weird for someone to be wearing sandals like that in early March."

Brittany seemed to accept the explanation without problems, and once she opened her wardrobe, Santana could persuade Brittany to borrow not only her shoes but also a pair of jeans to substitute for the sleep shorts and a bright yellow cardigan. The kitten-patterned t-shirt stayed on, though, and Santana had to admit that Brittany made the ensemble work. She looked quirky, yes, but quirky and cute, not quirky and odd like she'd been taking dressing tips from her cat statue like Brittany excitedly explained she sometimes did.

Kurt and his boy toy were in the kitchen, apparently making lunch, as Santana and Brittany left the room with a few of the coins wrapped in a handkerchief put in Santana's most official-looking and no-nonsense leather bag, and Kurt spotted them and looked like he was about to say something about Brittany dressed in Santana's clothes, but Santana gave him a look and a subtle nod towards Blaine the boy toy and Kurt went back to chopping carrots.

Brittany was incredibly fascinated by the metro, and a tiny bit scared as well, because she didn't like the idea of the train stopping between stations, which led to her practically cuddling against Santana's side for the duration of their journey. Santana saw a few sneering faces that she glared into averting their eyes, mostly in order to distract herself from the thought that the woman so cosily cuddling up to her had asked to kiss her less than an hour ago.

The shop Santana had picked up was far enough (Santana had no actual first-hand experience of crime, whatever she wanted people to believe, but it seemed logical to follow the advice from all the procedurals she'd watched, namely not to do your possibly questionable business in your own neighbourhood), so the journey took some time, but eventually they were inside the smallish shop stocked from top to bottom with various artefacts that did seem sort of cool until you looked at their price tags.

They'd agreed that Santana would do the talking, mostly because Santana feared Brittany's way of expressing herself would attract undue attention or suspicion and because Brittany, as she put it herself, "liked to hear Santana talk".

The woman they spoke to looked exactly like Santana would have expected a woman who deals in antiques to look like. She seemed a tiny bit puzzled by the sudden appearance of two women Santana and Brittany's age in her shop, but she didn't seem condescending or anything before Santana presented their business, and she got really animated really quickly when Santana showed her the coins.

"They belonged to Brittany's grandparents," Santana lied easily when questioned about their origin. "They travelled a lot in Greece, we think."

She was half-prepared to sprint off and pull Brittany with her, in case that would constitute theft and owning stolen property or something, but the woman - Dr Daniels, it read on one of the cards she gave them when they left - didn't look like she was about to accuse them of being descendants of thieves.

"If I were you," she said with a very serious tone, "I'd be careful when walking with a couple of those in your pockets. They're worth ten grand a piece, easily."

"Do you have any idea how to go about selling them?" Santana asked.

In the end, that turned out to be easier than she'd expected. It was probably just that Dr Daniels was really excited about the coins because she'd thought she'd never see one outside of a museum, but she promised to contact a few people she knew who would most definitely be interested, and to be in touch.

She was so nice that Santana half expected someone to follow them from the shop and knock them unconscious on some shadowy spot, but nothing like that happened. In fact, as they got off the metro at their stop and rose back to the land of having bars on one's phone, there were a few missed calls from Dr Daniels's number on Santana's phone, and a voicemail about how she might have a buyer lined up already.

To celebrate, Santana suggested ice cream, which Brittany frowned at until Santana explained what it was.

"I lived with the gods," Brittany said in between licks of her cone - three scoops of different flavours, caramel sauce and sprinklers because what the fuck, when Santana paid she paid well. Plus, she had an inkling that as soon as Brittany had money, it would be difficult to avoid her using it on Santana. She was just trying to get a head start. "Why don't they have anything like this?"

"Gotta leave something for our mere mortals." Santana bit at her own ice cream. "Everyone needs to be somehow special, my high school glee club coach loved to say, probably because he was so average in all the ways."

"What's glee club?" Brittany asked and Santana explained.

"Britt," she said once she was done and Brittany had started nibbling at the cone itself, "you have ice cream on your nose."

Brittany tried to lick it off, like it was a reflex, but her tongue was not long enough, so Santana pulled out a paper handkerchief (no way was she touching the one the coins were in, but luckily she was always prepared to get the blood of anyone who might cross her off her hands, or at least so she liked to say when she was asked about her well-stocked purse) and gently rubbed at Brittany's nose until the ice cream was gone.

"You could have easily licked it off," Brittany pointed out as Santana threw away the handkerchief. "I wouldn't have minded."

"It's not really-" Santana cleared her throat. "Most people don't lick their friends' noses."

"But you're not most people," Brittany said. "And I'd like it if you licked me."

Santana almost choked on her own ice cream.

That was the only incident on their way back home, though. Kurt was gone, and so was his boy toy, but after Santana had removed the coins from her bag (not with the others, though; she wanted to be able to present the buyer with the exact same ones just in case Dr Daniels had a really good memory and realised the coins were not the same she'd seen previously), she realised there wasn't really any point for them to stay inside either.

"Do you want to go to Manhattan?" she asked Brittany who was sitting on her bed and swinging her legs in the air. "You said you wanted to see what the city was like, and that's what most tourists go for."

On the way, she explained what a tourist was, and gave her own version of the founding of the town, as well as told Brittany what ‘expedition', ‘congregation' and ‘pizza' meant when written on signs posts and shop windows.

It was the last one that really shocked her, to be honest.

"You've never had pizza?" she asked, only barely able to not stop dead on her tracks and stare at Brittany with wide eyes. "How are you alive?"

She regretted the last sentence immediately when Brittany's eyes clouded with worry. "Is it bad?"

"No, no, no," Santana hastened to say. "You don't need it to live, it's just a food, but it's really, really good and whoever raised you should be sued for something for not having introduced you sooner."

"Maybe we can eat it later?" Brittany suggested. "Is it expensive? I can buy us some when I have money."

"It's not expensive." Santana reached for Brittany's pinky and linked it with hers. "We can get some for dinner, my treat."

Brittany didn't seem like the type to enjoy museums or art exhibitions or stuff like that, and Santana didn't feel like going to places where they couldn't talk, and anyway she wasn't so accustomed to New York living that she'd sneeze at a tour of Manhattan that included Times Square, the Statue of Liberty from very far away and Central Park.

In Central Park, they bought hot dogs (Brittany grew very distressed once she heard the name, but calmed down when Santana promised that no dogs had been harmed in the making of the food) and sat down on a bench. It was then that Santana approached the topic of practicalities.

"Where would you like to live once you have the money to afford it?"

Brittany leaned back against the backrest of the bench and munched on her hot dog, silent for some time.

"I don't want my mum to come in whenever she likes," she said. "She always woke me up earlier than I wanted to and then I had to take a nap during Zeus's dinner speech and that made everyone mad at me once."

"I don't think your mum's going to be a problem." Santana took a bite of her hot dog. "How about other people? Roommates?"

Brittany had raised up her foot as if to look at Santana's shoe. "Didn't you say we could have so much fun because I wouldn't have roommates?"

"Yeah, I said that." Santana reached for Brittany's hand and squeezed it. "You can absolutely have no roommates if you don't want them, you have the money. But it might be nice to get to know other people, too."

Brittany bit her lip. "I don't think I want them," she said. "I'd rather have sleepovers with you."

"Okay." Brittany tilted her head to rest against Santana's, and Santana couldn't help smiling. "Do you need much room? I'll go ahead now and tell you that you've managed to stumble into the most expensive city on Earth to live in."

"I don't think we'll need much room," Brittany said. "I want to see places and the world. I've sat at home for eighteen years."

Santana hoped Brittany didn't pick up on the sudden alertness on her. She didn't want to push Brittany for personal details, but if Brittany brought it up herself, it was fair game to poke around just a little, right?

"Is that how old you are?" she asked, hopefully with a casual tone. "I'm nineteen. We're almost the same age, then."

"I just turned," Brittany said. "That's why I got to come here. My mum promised."

"Did she say how long you'll be staying?"

Please don't let it be just temporary. Then again, Santana wasn't sure how Brittany's pre-negotiated departure fit into any of the things she already knew about Brittany, except maybe that it didn't seem like her parents were completely atrocious human beings. Although it probably didn't matter what Brittany's parents thought of her coming back seeing that they'd given themselves no way to contact Brittany, at least nothing that Santana would have seen.

"She didn't." Brittany gave her a wide smile. "I can be here as long as I like!"

Santana hoped her smile didn't look as relieved as she felt. "That's great. You're a great friend, Brittany, I'd hate to lose you because you went back."

"You wouldn't lose me," Brittany said. "You could come back with me. My mum used to live here but then she went with my dad." She frowned a little. "It was pretty sad, though. They don't want to tell me because they don't think I can handle sad things, but I know they both got hurt a lot before my mum could join my dad on Olympus."

Santana filed all that away. "Do you want to go back, though?"

"Not now." Brittany squeezed Santana's hand. "Not for a while, I think, now that I've found you. I really want to be with you, Santana."

She had absolutely no clue about the sense in which Brittany meant that, but the words made her smile anyway.

"Well, it just so happens that I really like your company. Do you want to head home? We can start looking at renting ads for when you sell your coins."

"Is that what humans always do at the end of the day?" Brittany asked, tilting her head to the side. "Go home?"

"Ummm, no." Santana couldn't help her smirk. "Sometimes humans go to see culture in like exhibitions or museums, or to their friends' homes to have a good time. Or then they just go to a club to drink away all the awful things that happened to them during the day. Or dance."

At the word, Brittany perked up.

"Can we go to a club?" she asked. "I've missed dancing. My dad used to teach me a lot because it was the only thing my mum would let him to."

Clubbing was not exactly what Santana had thought cults would specialise in, but then again, why not? She'd been too tired the day before, but after that she'd had a good night's sleep, and when had she ever said no to a pretty girl asking her to dance? Plus, she reasoned, it was probably best if Brittany had someone with her to look out for her the first time she went out into a club. Thinking back to the Fuckwits (that had been within twenty-four hours; that felt surreal), she wanted to punch a wall at the thought of someone trying to take advantage of Brittany again.

"Of course," she said. "To dance or to drink or both?"

"What do they drink?" Brittany asked. "I hope it's not pomegranate juice. My mum always told me to be wary of that."

The journey to one of Santana's favourite places was nicely filled with Santana explaining what alcohol was, only to discover that Brittany was well-acquainted with the substance, only not with that name, and Brittany telling her lots of stories about going to the Underworld that sounded really fascinating and made Santana wonder if Underworld was a neighbouring cult.

It was Saturday night, so the club was predictably packed.

"Stay close to me, okay?" Santana said as she took Brittany's hand and began to move towards the dance floor. "Clubs are really fun, but there're some people that you don't want to get mixed up with. And don't accept drinks if anyone offers you one."

"What if you do?" Brittany asked.

Santana smiled at her. "Do you trust me not to put something in it?"

"I trust you with the world," Brittany said, moving so close to Santana that Santana could feel her breathing on her skin. "I can see your heart in your eyes."

Santana looked away because she most definitely was not going to kiss Brittany in the middle of a club without forewarning when none of the reasons why it was a bad idea had disappeared.

Brittany swore up and down she didn't recognise any of the songs that were playing, but her dance moves were wonderful nonetheless. Well, wonderful was one word to describe them; it didn't take more than a few songs for them to catch the eye of more than a few guys who looked like they thought it was a prize to get to dance with them.

To Santana's great satisfaction, when one of them actually did ask if he could dance with Brittany, Brittany wrapped her arms around Santana and said, "I only dance with her."

She was just looking out for Brittany, Santana told herself, both as a justification and a reminder. Nothing more. Just looking out for a friend.

She'd never been quite so mesmerised to see a friend dance with her to Britney Spears, though.

In the end, it took them quite a while to get to their first drinks. The men who'd been watching them offered, of course, but while Santana was usually happy to spend straight men's money if they were foolish enough to offer, it didn't feel right this time.

To no one's surprise, Brittany couldn't name a single drink when Santana asked, so Santana asked for the most colourful cocktail the bar tender could think of.

"Not exactly your usual style," the bar tender commented as she gave Santana her change.

"I've got a lady in waiting," Santana said and nodded towards the tequila she'd also ordered. "This is for me."

"That sounds more like it," the bar tender said. "Hope your lady likes her rainbow colours."

Predictably, Britany did.

"It tastes like two in the morning," she said, but Santana could hazard a guess at how Brittany felt about two in the morning from the happy smile on Brittany's face.

She didn't get to witness Brittany at that hour though, because as fun as dancing and drinking was, Santana was going to have class and work on Monday, a proper rude awakening after the freedom of the weekend, and she couldn't let go of her sleeping rhythm completely.

"We should probably head home," she said into Brittany's ear s the song they'd been dancing to finished.

"Just one more," Brittany said with such pleading eyes that Santana didn't really feel capable of saying no.

Perhaps she should have, she thought just a few seconds later when the next song turned out to be significantly slower than the club's usual fare. That didn't seem to bother Brittany, though; she flashed Santana an excited smile before wrapping her arms around Santana's neck and starting to sway to the music, even slower than the song would call for.

Santana probably should have pulled away and made her excuses, but she'd already danced in a far more explicit way with Brittany and it felt hypocritical of her to draw the line at intimate.

Besides, she could see Brittany's happy smile as Brittany's head rested against Santana's shoulder, her eyes closed, and Santana was not in the habit of stopping things when they clearly were what both parties wanted. She put her hands to Brittany's waist closed her eyes, allowing herself to pretend for a second that it wasn't complicated at all.

\---

"You'll thank me in the morning," Santana said as she made Brittany down a large glass of water. "Hangovers are no joke."

"Is that when you lean too far when looking out a window?" Brittany asked.

Santana couldn't help the laugh, but it came as a surprise to her how fond it sounded.

"No,"she said. "But it might make that sound like a good idea. It's when you drink so much that you wake up next morning with a headache and feel gross and maybe throw up."

"I think I had a hungover as a child," Brittany said. "My dad was so angry because he said it's a mortal disease and I was supposed to be safe from all of them."

So even a cult could believe in herd immunity, Santana thought. You learnt something new every day.

"I don't think that was the reason," she said. "Probably just some stomach bug or something. But the point is that you really should finish that water."

It was possible Brittany wouldn't even need that. They hadn't drunk very much, really, but better safe than sorry, and they had danced a lot without sufficient rehydration. Brittany drank obediently, and they retreated to Santana's room.

Once again, Brittany was the first one to fall asleep. Santana stayed awake for long after Brittany's breathing had steadied. She couldn't help marvelling at what a difference one day made: one day ago Brittany's presence in her bed had seemed like the weirdest thing, but now Santana was not quite sure how she'd fill the bed all by herself when Brittany would find her own place.

\---

Brittany was still asleep when Santana woke up. For a moment, Santana enjoyed the opportunity to just snuggle up to Brittany's side and be happy, but then her brain awoke properly and she forced herself to pull away. Slow-dancing was one thing, and Santana probably should have refused even that honour, but now she couldn't even justify herself with Brittany's will because Brittany was not even awake.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to push away the covers so that they only covered Brittany.

Watching Brittany sleep would have been no less creepy, but venturing out of her room was a lot like jumping off the frying pan into the fire, because Kurt was sitting in the kitchen, nursing what clearly wasn't his first cup of coffee for the day and looking like he'd been expecting her.

"Wanna tell me who on earth that was yesterday?" was his good morning.

"And good morning to you, too." Santana fetched herself a mug of coffee and sat down opposite him. "That was Brittany. Also lower your voice a little, you're going to wake her up."

It looked like Kurt could only barely avoid spitting out his coffee.

"She's still here? God, and you told me I was a romantic fool for asking Blaine to sleep over after just two weeks. When did you meet her?"

Santana ground her teeth, knowing without having to hear it what Kurt would have to say about her answer. "This Friday."

Kurt was a master of an artfully raised contemptuous eyebrow.

“Oh, yes,” he said, just as Santana had expected. “That’s definitely a fully thought-out mature relationship. Why don’t you ask her to move in already? I won’t mind at all.”

Santana glared at him. She was good at that.

“She’s not moving in. She’ll leave just as soon as...” She trailed off, not really wanting to tell Kurt right then that Brittany was going to spend at least a few more nights.

Sadly for her, Kurt wasn’t as clueless as most men Santana had been acquainted with. “Just as soon as?”

Santana didn’t sigh in Kurt’s presence, but she really wanted to then. “Just as soon as she finds her own place,” she said, grinding her teeth already in preparation. “And get down from your high horse, I can see you mounting it already.”

Kurt’s voice was slightly higher than usual when he said, “So she’s homeless?”

A good offense was the best defence, sometimes, Santana thought and began hers.

“Yeah,” she spat out, her voice so low that Brittany couldn’t hear it from her room if she had happened to wake up already. “She’s homeless. I met her on Friday when two idiots were shouting at her from a car. What would you have done?”

“Well, probably not pretended to my roommate that she was a two-night stand!”

Santana didn’t sigh, but her next breath was unusually deep and slow. “You haven’t talked to her. Really. It’s- She’s-“ Kurt gave her an unimpressed look. Probably a good time to change tack. “You remember when I got you drunk on tequila so that you had a hangover on your first date with what’s-his-name, the one with the-”

“Chandler,” Kurt said, voice very dry. “Yes, I tend to remember the more humiliating moments of my life, thank you for reminding me.”

“He threw up on you on the second date, you’re even.” Santana waved her hand. “Anyway, you told me-“ She just couldn’t use her regular sarcastic tone for the story. From Kurt’s face, she saw all too clearly that he picked up on the switch. “You told me that you wanted to find someone who, at least for a moment, could make you forget what an absolute shithole the world is.”

“I didn’t say that,” Kurt said.

“That’s what you meant. She’s like that, Kurt. She makes me feel like maybe there’s hope after all.”

“You’re not even drunk,” Kurt said with all his customary snark, and it was only because Santana had known him for a long time that she picked up on how mushy romantic his eyes were. “Be careful or otherwise I’ll start thinking you have a heart after all.”

“Whatever.” Santana pretended to swat at Kurt’s arm, but the attempt was so half hearted that she missed by at least a foot.

“You better not feed her any of my stuff, though,” Kurt said.

Santana made a mental note to tell Kurt in like a month that she’d already given Brittany some of his honey. Heart or not, riling people up was always a great pleasure of hers.

\---

That Sunday, and the week following it, Santana was more productive than she remembered ever being. She went to all her classes, did the reading for them and turned in three assignments, had four shifts at the diner, did all her laundry, went jogging twice, and helped a homeless ex-cult member to forge a live for herself.

The Sunday was spent on the internet looking at ads for places. They were a good team; Brittany looked at the place and Santana looked at the price, and then Brittany decided which ones she might like and Santana sent emails asking about a viewing. Additionally, they ordered takeout and Santana introduced Brittany to pizza.

“I’m going to have a chat with Zeus when I see him the next time,” Brittany said as she reached for her fifth slice. “He likes to say that our food is so divine but he hasn’t kept up for like two thousand years.”

On Monday, Santana dashed out of class to meet Brittany in front of Dr Daniels’s antique shop to sell the coins and then ran off to work. It took her over three orders received and served to realise that in all that hurry, she’d thrust her keys to Brittany with only the quick request that she’d stay up until Santana got home to let her in. She came home to Brittany’s happy smile and Blaine the boy toy sitting at the kitchen table nursing a coffee. The other cup by a displaced chair and the way Blaine continued speaking as soon as Brittany stopped hugging Santana made it clear that they’d just been talking. A quick questionnaire revealed that Blaine had come in to hang out with Kurt, who’d excused himself around nine because his day had been really exhausting, after which Brittany had offered him coffee because she thought it was a waste to be alone when she could be with someone.

“He’s really nice,” Brittany said later when Santana tried to approach the subject. “He promised to loan me some of his human music to try out. Did you know that that lady we danced to has the same name as I do? And he’ll make such a good dolphin partner for Kurt.”

Santana didn’t ask what she meant, but it felt like she was starting to understand even without.

On Tuesday, they saw four apartments and signed a lease. Santana had been prepared for the process to take a lot longer, especially since Brittany had no references except Santana’s, and absolutely no credit or paper trail of any kind, but it was once again proven that money did in fact make the world go round and pulling out three months’ rent and offering it as a deposit did make a landlady lose her judgement just for a long enough time to offer Brittany the place.

It was small, of course; Brittany might have a fortune in her coins, but Santana wasn’t quite sure how often one could sell them without raising suspicion or saturating the market and so paying too much hadn’t seemed like a good idea, not to mention that Brittany seemed excited at the idea of cosiness. The apartment was a studio, strictly speaking, but the layout was such that there was a corner a little separated from the rest, the perfect size for a queen bed as the landlady proudly informed them, before winking and pointing out that a queen-sized bed in turn was perfect for the single occupant who had a regular guest. Santana kind of wanted to feel affronted at the implication (whose innuendo thankfully flew over Brittany’s head), but the landlady was using the exact mix of suggestive and approving tones that her grandma had always used on Santana’s cousins and their straight significant others and had very pointedly refused Santana. Apparently, the tone from someone who even bore a passing resemblance (the skin was a little darker and the build a little bit rounder, but Santana would have no problem imagining them cast as cousins or even siblings in something) to her grandmother was one of Santana’s many kryptonites.

In just an hour or so, Brittany had paid the deposit and first month’s rent, all in cash much to the landlady’s astonishment, and gone from homeless to the occupant of a rather nice if decidedly empty place.

“Are you going to move in right away?” the landlady, Ms Brown, asked once all copies of the lease were signed. “I perhaps should have taken the other set of keys, I didn’t expect this all so quickly, but I can give you this one, they’re the same, of course.”

“We’ll probably do it gradually,” Santana said. That they would, mostly because Brittany wouldn’t have anything to bring and they’d have to go shopping for furniture first, but she didn’t say that. “Avoid having to rent a van.”

“Driving in the city is such a bother.” Ms Brown nodded her head vigorously.

Brittany slept in Santana’s bed for two more nights, spending the days walking around the neighbourhood, before she got so excited about her own place that they had to quickly buy her an air mattress and bed clothes so that she could sleep there. Santana took them there with her and on the way helped Brittany buy groceries for a few days, simple stuff that wouldn’t require her to use the stove (which she was unfamiliar with) or even a microwave (which she was also unfamiliar with and on top of that didn’t own).

“I can show you how to cook at some point, if you want,” Santana said as Brittany put two cans of pineapple into the shopping basket.

“Kurt told me he would help.” Brittany rested her hand on Santana’s for a second. “But then he started using all those weird words that I didn’t really understand like cramb rulle and sounding like he needs to see a healer and I’m not quite sure if I want to catch that.”

Santana let out a laugh. “I doubt his boner for French cuisine is contagious. But I can show you some basics and then he can come in and you can weasel a few great meals out of him before he realises what’s happening.”

Brittany opened her mouth, and for a second Santana was afraid she was going to ask what a boner was, but luckily Brittany asked her to define ‘cuisine’ instead.

After making sure that Brittany knew how to open and close her door and reminding her gently that she needed the key to get in, Santana left Brittany to try her hand at independent living. She had to work that Friday, and customers were just as annoying as they always were, but she got through the evening by reminding herself over and over again of her Saturday plans with Brittany.

On Saturday, she got to indulge in one of her favourite pastimes – burning money – without having to foot the bill herself.

It became clear to her that they really needed to start with a cell phone before she even met Brittany. She’d been supposed to go get Brittany from her place at eleven, but she woke up at half past ten without any memory of her alarm going off. Consequently, she was running late and Brittany’s smile at seeing her was considerably dimmed by the fact that Brittany had looked so sad before she’d taken in it was Santana.

“I thought you’d forgotten about me,” Brittany said once she’d hugged Santana for a moment.

“No, I just forgot to set my alarm, I think.” Santana pulled away a bit, brushed a stray lock of hair off Brittany’s face and felt blood rush to her cheeks from embarrassment. She didn’t usually do that to friends. “You need a phone, though. That way, you can call me anytime you think I’ve forgotten about you so that I can remind you you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Despite all that, they didn’t actually start with a phone, but with a metro card. It took Brittany some time to get a grip on the turnstiles, and even after that she argued that she would be afraid to go in without Santana because they seemed like they were the gates to the Underworld which, according to Brittany, you wouldn’t enter unless it was for your beloved. Santana masked her sigh, but she didn’t pull her hand away when Brittany took it on the escalator.

The phone they settled on was not the best one out there, but you could use it both to call and to play Candy Crush, so it filled Brittany’s needs perfectly.

“So I must put money in the phone before I can use it?”

“Not in the phone, really,” Santana made sure to clarify. “There’s a number you can send a text to to find out how much you have left, and how about we agree that when it’s less than ten dollars, you call me and I’ll show you how to top it up?”

Brittany nodded excitedly.

Their next stop was a string of clothing stores, because while Santana was surprised by how much she didn’t mind seeing her clothes on Brittany, she needed them herself and Brittany needed something that wouldn’t appear lewd if she forgot to keep her knees together while sitting.

Santana had always found animal print hideous, so she was really dismayed when Brittany began piling up things she liked and it became apparent that Brittany really liked small cats and dogs and owls and frogs and every single print that Santana had assumed was still produced only due to the fashion-blind Rachel Berrys of the world.

It turned out, though, that the kitten-patterned pyjama top had not been an exception that proved the rule, and Santana watched in awe as Brittany tried on outfit after outfit, always coming out looking great.

She pretended to be in dire need of new bras when they went shopping for underwear, though, excusing herself after taking Brittany to the staff counter for help, and breathed a sigh of relief when a sales clerk began ringing up Brittany’s purchases on that particular department.

After a few hours, they took Brittany’s new wardrobe back to Brittany’s apartment (to be deposited unceremoniously on the floor because Brittany didn’t have any storage space yet) and Brittany changed out of Santana’s clothes. They had sandwiches before going back out, this time in search of furniture.

Santana was not very good at, or interested in, redecorating or interior design, but she’d forced Kurt to divulge a few of his favourite second-hand shops to check for bargains by threatening to tell Blaine embarrassing stories about Kurt’s less impressive high school moments, so she knew where to take Brittany.

It turned out Brittany’s tastes in furniture were exactly as eclectic as her tastes in fashion, and they left the shops having purchased not a bed, wardrobe and a few chairs like Santana had intended, but a two-foot-high faux statue of Aphrodite (Brittany called her her favourite grandmother; Santana maybe should have seen something along that lines coming), a large lacy table cloth that looked like it was handmade, and a huge ornate armchair that looked like someone living in the middle of the woods might buy.

Santana had never been so glad for home delivery. Otherwise, she might have given in to the temptation of accidentally dropping Aphrodite from a bridge.

After that, Santana persuaded Brittany to come to IKEA with her to get a bed, a wardrobe, a few chairs and a kitchen table.

The rest of their day passed swimmingly as Brittany assembled the furniture – she declared it her favourite new game – and Santana tried to reason how she could make it all fit in Brittany’s apartment so that Brittany would have the space to move around. After discarding her master plan of dropping the damn armchair out a window, she took a deep breath and began manoeuvring the kitchen table past the chair so that it would be closer to the cooking area.

“We can get you more stuff once you have a chance to see what you need,” she said as they were done and eating apple slices in the kitchen.

“What I need is a sleepover,” Brittany said very seriously. “How much does that cost?”

Santana laughed. She had the following day free, although she should probably start working on some school stuff.

“I think there’s no cost on that,” she said. “Except probably those gummy bears you bought. Kurt always looks so judgingly at me when I buy sweets, and then steals all of them for himself anyway, so I’m a woman starved.”

“The gummy bears will go to their deaths more happily knowing you’re eating them,” Brittany said very seriously.

Santana texted Kurt that she was staying at Brittany’s (you might call her a bad roommate but no one was more diligent about letting her roommates know when they could have a sex marathon interrupted only by copious amounts of syrupy sweetness) and then excused herself to Brittany’s tiny bathroom to change into the pyjamas Brittany had loaned from her. She looked at her reflection and wondered who was the last girl she’d met she’d have been willing to don Rachel Berry’s animal print pyjamas for.

No one came to mind, really.

Since Brittany had so little stuff, a lot of the usual sleepover activities like watching films or doing each other’s nails were out of the question, but Santana did braid Brittany’s hair and then tried to sit still while Brittany did hers. Brittany’s braiding was as eclectic as her personality, and Santana refused to enjoy the feeling of Brittany’s hands working at her hair like she wanted to, but she made herself allow Brittany to finish her work after which they simply laid down to cuddle on Brittany’s bed with a bowl of grapes, for lack of anything else to do (the suggestion was Brittany’s; Santana had a suspicion she’d underestimated Brittany when it came to outwitting each other about doing girlfriend-like stuff).

Like she’d been reading Santana’s mind, Brittany tilted her head slightly from where it was resting against Santana’s shoulder and asked, “Do you have a special lady friend?”

Santana wanted to frown, but she was fairly sure Brittany could see her face so she didn’t. “No, not at the moment, if you mean what I think you mean.”

“I mean the sort of special lady friend that you kiss and love and spend the rest of your life with,” Brittany said. “My dad told me about it. He said I might want to have a special lady friend or a special gentleman friend.”

“Do you?” Santana asked. “Want a special lady friend or a special gentleman friend? We just usually call them girlfriends and boyfriends here.”

Brittany glanced at her like she wasn’t quite sure what to say. It wasn’t a look that suited her very well; as long as Santana had known her, she had always spoken her mind and seemed confident in her opinions.

“I used to want one,” Brittany eventually said. “Of either, I don’t really mind which one. I asked my dad if they came in packages like some of the dolls I got, but he just laughed at me and didn’t answer the question.”

“They don’t come in packages,” Santana said, hoping Brittany wouldn’t think Santana was insulting her. “They’re just someone you meet and really like and want to be with. Sadly, you don’t get to just order the perfect one, you’ll have to find them. It’s pretty messy, here at least.”

“I know.” Brittany emphasised her statement with a solemn nod. “It was really messy when my parents got together, too, although they don’t like to talk about it all that much. That’s how I know it was messy.”

Well, there at least was one similarity between Brittany’s cult and the actual real world. Relationships were messy in both. Figured.

That wasn’t at the forefront of Santana’s thoughts, though.

“What did you mean when you said you used to want one?” she asked.

Brittany bit her lip and looked away. “I used to think about a special friend who would just appear and make me want to be with them. But I don’t want a special friend anymore. I just want you.”

Santana took a deep breath, glad that Brittany wasn’t looking at her and Santana didn’t have to force her face into a neutral expression.

Not for the first time, she wished she’d been through things with Brittany, known her since like middle school or something, that she just generally knew Brittany better. Brittany seemed like she was a legal adult her age made her to be, capable of making decisions like an adult (or at least as well as any eighteen-year-old could, as well as Santana could), but Santana didn’t know anything about the cult she’d grown up in, not really. Maybe they had some sort of thing about how the “love god’s” daughter had to go out into the world on her eighteenth birthday and sleep with someone, just to do the deed. Maybe they’d drilled the idea into Brittany’s head from infancy so that Brittany couldn’t know whether she really wanted to or not.

Santana swallowed.

She was falling for Brittany, hard, and the thought of Brittany having been brainwashed into some twisted fuck’s idea of what she should do made her blood boil and then run cold.

“You’re really amazing, Brittany,” she made herself say. “Don’t ever think I wouldn’t want to spend time with you, because I do.”

Brittany breathed in heavily like she had a runny nose.

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling up at Santana even though it was a little fragile around the corners. “My mum told me about this, too. Sometimes people just don’t want. It’s okay, I won’t be mean about it.”

Santana didn’t know what to say, so she pulled Brittany closer to herself and buried her face in Brittany’s hair.

\---

The next week flew by, with regular texts from Brittany and meeting each other whenever they could.

“Courtship suits you, Santana,” Rachel said at work when she caught Santana checking her phone for the third time in an hour.

“I’m not courting.” Santana pushed the phone quickly back into her apron. “And no one even says ‘courtship’, Berry, what the-“

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Rachel said and left to check on her section before Santana could threaten to throw something at her.

Brittany was doing great all on her own, too. On Monday, Santana received an excited text about how Brittany had went to the market to thank the nice woman who’d given her the apples the day she came to Earth world, as Brittany said, and they’d talked for a long while and Brittany had helped to lift up heavy fruit boxes and got more free apples and an invitation to come by whenever she wanted. She learnt to use the oven and surprised Santana with pizza made from frozen on Thursday, which they celebrated by testing out all the colourful soft drinks Brittany had bought the day before because she liked how they looked.

Once again, though, Saturday was Santana’s favourite day of the week.

She didn’t expect it to be, not really. She had the morning shift at work, and she was decidedly not a morning person, so it was always a struggle to even get to work, let alone act polite for hours. She had been looking forwards to her dinner with Brittany (Brittany had bought a simple recipes cook book a few days before, and she’d been very excited at the thought of making Santana something from scratch), but she’d also been mentally prepared to forcing down inedible crap because she liked to prepare for the worst and Brittany didn’t strike her as a natural talent in the kitchen.

And when Brittany let her in and told her that an old friend had come to visit, Santana’s mind truly jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

The man in Brittany’s kitchen didn’t look like he was part of a cult; he was tall-ish, quite handsome probably if you were into that, and most importantly, wearing thoroughly normal clothes that looked like he’d bought them at the Gap or something. He did look a lot like what Santana would imagine a Greek god looking like, though.

It figured Brittany introduced him as Hermes.

“Nice to meet you,” Santana said, sounding anything but.

“Brittany has told me so much about you.” Hermes flashed a bright smile in Santana’s direction before redirecting it towards Brittany. “Her mother will be so happy to hear she’s getting on so well here in the real world.”

“Yeah, she’s wonderful.” Santana hoped Brittany didn’t pick up on the venomous tone in her words, because she’d indubitably think it was because of her, not whom Santana was talking to. “I’m so happy I found her.”

Brittany beamed at that and began talking about the food she’d been making. It was some kind of sauce, or a stew, and it looked a little questionable but was actually pretty good when eaten with pasta. Throughout the meal, Brittany and Hermes chatted about various people whose names Santana thought vaguely rang a bell about a history lesson she’d spent filing her nails, and about some whom she could place in Greek mythology with confidence. Meanwhile, Santana ate and observed.

Brittany seemed at ease with this Hermes guy, but then again she’d seemed relatively at ease with a pair of street-harassing fuckwits so Santana didn’t put much stock in that. She could smell sex and lust and the like on people, though, and her creeper senses were well-honed with years of practice, and there was absolutely nothing about Hermes that set them off except the fact that he was part of Brittany’s cult, which had to be at least somehow warped.

“Oh,” Brittany said once they’d all emptied their plates. “I meant to run down to buy ice cream but then Hermes came and I forgot.”

“It’s okay,” Santana hastened to say. “It was great, Brittany, we don’t really need-“

“You could run down and get it now?” Hermes said simultaneously. “I’m sure we’ll manage not to set the place on fire without your supervision.”

Santana glared at him a little, because either he was a budding arsonist with a bad sense of humour or else he was belittling Brittany (or then he was just a family friend making a tired joke, but despite Hermes’s lack of creep, Santana didn’t trust him to be so benevolent), but Brittany seemed to think it was a good idea.

“Your favourite is the one with the fish, isn’t it?” she asked Santana, who only narrowly managed to avoid a smug glance at Hermes because it was her whose ice cream preferences Brittany was interested in.

“Yeah,” she said.

As soon as the door closed after Brittany, Hermes turned to Santana with a newly-found focus.

“You’re her friend, aren’t you?”

With Brittany not around, Santana didn’t need to mask her contempt. “Evidently.”

“Is she doing as well as she seems to? Her mother will pester me for news immediately, she’s been pulling at her hairs this whole time, muttering about how she should get her baby girl back-“

Santana sat up straighter, assumed her most fierce look and leaned just the tiniest bit towards Hermes.

“Listen, you sorry excuse for a human being,” she said, pointing her finger at Hermes. “She’s not going anywhere. She’s doing great here, and whatever your faux-Greek cult is up to, she’s going to have no part in it.”

Hermes raised his eyebrows as if he was about to argue, but the expression melted into a hearty laugh.

“You think- Zeus’s lightning, Santana, it’s not a cult. I’ve been around this world and this time, you still teach the Greek gods at school, you know who I am. Hermes, the gods’ messenger, in the flesh.”

“I know who you think you are,” Santana said. “I also know a homeless guy who thinks he’s Freddie Mercury.”

“But hasn’t Brittany told you that she’s the daughter of Eros and Psyche?” Hermes asked. “Really, what bad manners has she assumed.”

“Her manners are fine.” Santana pursed her lips. If she was going to have to spend some time alone with this guy, she might as well pump him for information, like only Santana Lopez could. “Listen, I don’t give a crap about your common delusion or whatever. Let’s talk about Brittany. You sound like you’ve known her for long.”

“Her whole life, of course.” It seemed the new topic suited Hermes just as fine. “She’s a relative newborn, just eighteen years old compared to the thousands of the rest of us, we’ve all spent a lot of time with her. She’s so incredibly precious, so innocent, so-“

“That’s creepy,” Santana said. Whatever hyperbole he was spurning about thousands of years, he was clearly older than Brittany. “I won’t hesitate to send a small anonymous tip about a creepy cult to the police.”

Again, Hermes looked affronted. “But they have no jurisdiction on Mount Olympus, it’d garner Zeus’s wrath on you mortals! Besides,” he went on, tone defensive, “you’ve grown so prudish along the years. It’s so hard to find a good orgy around here these days, it’ll almost make you want to stay on Olympus all the time. The things they say about us in your books...” He scoffed. “And anyway, what would you report? Psyche was always very clear that she wasn’t about to let her second daughter become as intense about it all as her first, I don’t even know if Brittany has ever been told what sex is.”

Santana’s heart rate picked up. Hermes was a weirdo, no doubt, small wonder he hadn’t got himself arrested already, but he seemed genuinely sincere.

Nevertheless, that didn’t make her trust Hermes any more as a person. “Well, she definitely knows the word.”

“I suppose she would,” Hermes said. “Daughter of Eros, reckon he couldn’t keep his mouth completely shut, no matter his promise to Psyche. You know, I always thought no way those two were going to last? I mean, who does, really? No one, that’s who. But they have. It’s so weird, isn’t it?”

Well, it was good to hear that regular world was not the only place where the divorce rate was high.

Santana shrugged her shoulders and Hermes started talking, almost to himself, about all the people he knew who’d got together and broken up and made up ad nauseum. Santana remembered some of the specific stories from her history books (damn, these people were the most committed to their fantasy she’d ever met), but a lot of it sounded familiar simply by the virtue of being very alike to what glee club had been like in high school. In other words, been there, done that, so boring.

Luckily, Brittany came within minutes, bearing ice cream, which was indeed Santana’s favourite flavour. (And none for Hermes, who sighed and said he didn’t like the marshmallow fluff.) Her arrival didn’t really stop Hermes’s litany of disastrous couples, but at least Brittany’s stories were funnier (Santana was not biased in any way whatsoever).

Even better, since Hermes wasn’t really into the ice cream, he seemed to decide fairly soon that it was the time to go. Santana tried not to look too happy when he announced his intention.

“Say hi to mum and dad,” Brittany told him as she got up to hug him.

“I most definitely will.” Hermes glanced at Santana. “I’ll tell them all about your... friend, too.”

Brittany didn’t get the pause, though. It was probably for the better.

“Is he a good friend?” Santana asked once Hermes was safely out the door and they’d moved onto Brittany’s bed, their go-to lounging place since Brittany didn’t own a couch.

Brittany shrugged her shoulders. “He’s a family friend. You can’t really avoid anyone on Olympus.”

“Yeah, your stories made that pretty obv-“

“Did he say something to you?”

The question startled Santana a little, especially as she took in Brittany’s expression. She was looking at Santana like she was bracing to be hurt, somehow, her bottom lip protruding slightly and eyes avoiding Santana’s.

Santana really wanted to hug her, but she forced herself to make do with taking Brittany’s hand and rubbing circles at the back of it. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Brittany’s fingers curled around Santana’s hand. “But you seemed different after I came back with the ice cream. I couldn’t decide if you were smug about telling him off really well or just mad somehow.”

“I wasn’t mad,” Santana said. “Definitely not at you. I just think your family friend Hermes is a bit of a douchebag.”

Brittany nodded, but she still looked sad.

“I was actually talking to him about you.” Santana swallowed. “You remember when we were talking, and you said you didn’t want a special friend anymore, and I didn’t really answer you?”

“Yeah.” Brittany seemed to curl deeper into herself, but she didn’t pull her hand away from Santana.

“I didn’t answer you,” Santana said, “because I really only just want you, too.”

Brittany bit her lip, but Santana could see some of the tension disappear from her frame. “But why didn’t you just say that?”

“Because,” how could she say it without sounding patronising (she probably had been, at least a little; she really should watch that), “I thought, maybe your cul- your family, had made you believe you’d need to do stuff like that when you really didn’t, I- I just didn’t want to take advantage of you in any way because you’re amazing and you deserve the world.”

Brittany smiled, genuine and wide, and Santana breathed a little easier.

“I am,” Brittany said. “And I do. That’s why I want you, because you’re the best person I’ve ever known. Can we cuddle now?”

Santana broke out into a smile as well. “Yeah, we can.”

They were sitting close already, so it was not difficult to move to full-on cuddling. Brittany giggled when Santana enveloped her in her arms, and it was contagious.

They lay on Brittany’s bed laughing for quite a long time, since every time one of them managed to stop the other picked up. Santana had never begun a relationship that way, but she couldn’t help but be extremely pleased about it.

“Does this mean you’re my girlfriend now?” Brittany asked once they both managed to stop giggling.

“Yeah,” Santana said. “I guess it does. But only if you’re my girlfriend too.”

“Of course. I think I like being girlfriends better than having a special friend.”

“Me too.” Santana tried to push away a stray lock of hair of Brittany’s that was getting on her face, but it was difficult when she didn’t want to move her hands and could only use her face. “And ‘special friend’ has such nasty implications here.”

They were quiet for a while. Santana closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth of Brittany against her, her soft body and even the owl-print t-shirt that Brittany had insisted she buy.

She was startled out of her thoughts when Brittany spoke.

“Do girlfriends kiss each other?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Santana took a deep breath that Brittany hopefully didn’t notice and flashed a smile. “Yeah.”

Her first thought when Brittany put her lips against Santana’s was that Brittany had been shopping for lip gloss without Santana. Her lips tasted of that artificial strawberry that they used on lip gloss and lip balm, and when Santana moved to return the kiss she felt some of it transfer on her as well, not that it much bothered her.

Brittany was a natural talent in the matters of kissing, and Santana had to remind herself to be careful and gentle and not pounce on her like she might at someone she was making out with as a prelude to no-strings-attached sex. She brought her hands up to cup at Brittany’s face, brushing some of her hair back and out of their way, trying to occupy them with something else to stop the urge to pin Brittany down onto the bed.

She was breathing heavily when Brittany pulled away, like they’d done much more than a relatively innocent kiss (well, not really of the in-front-of-parents material, but Santana had practically written the handbook on dirty making out, and this was not it), but it didn’t seem like Brittany much cared.

“I think kissing is my new favourite thing,” she announced.

“Well what a coincidence,” Santana said. “Because kissing you became my new favourite thing like a minute ago. Maybe we should do it again.”

“That’s a good idea,” Brittany said in a completely serious tone, and moved to kiss Santana again.

They’d had some pretty great Saturdays before that, but yeah, nothing was going to top this one.

\---

Things changed a lot less after their kiss than Santana would have expected. They still texted a lot, although maybe a little more, and they still met up as often as they could, and mostly they even did the same things (except that now they also made out, and Santana had always thought it was a horrible cliché to make out on top of national monuments but the Statue of Liberty really felt a lot less tourist-y when most of her memories of it heavily involved Brittany’s tongue).

Of course, it was still somehow fundamentally different in a way Santana could have only guessed at before it actually happened.

She’d always looked forwards to Brittany’s texts, and liked to hear what Brittany had been up to any given day, but now she was even more excited every time she got a text (and she had to get Brittany her own text message sound because it was really disappointing to pull out your phone to look at a text from your girlfriend only to realise it was from a random classmate who’d forgotten to take notes during History 101, and seriously, when had Santana become the sort of person people dared to text about borrowing her notes?), and practically skipped all the way to Brittany’s every time they were having a sleepover.

Well, things changed not that much until one night, Brittany propped her head up with her arm and asked, “So what is sex? Is it as nice as kissing?”

Santana turned on the bed and mimicked Brittany’s position. “Depends on who you ask. It’s definitely nice.”

That was probably the understatement of the year, but in Santana’s defence, kissing Brittany was really damn great.

“What kind of nice?” Brittany pouted a little. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

Santana dropped her smile, reaching for Brittany’s hand. “Sorry, Brit-Brit. I can tell you.”

Brittany cheered up instantly, worming her way to Santana and cuddling against her. “I bet it’s the nicest with you.”

Putting her arms around Brittany, Santana laughed a little. “Well I sure hope so. Otherwise all that practice would’ve been for nothing.”

Most of it had been, it turned out, unless you wanted an extended course on how not to eat out or finger a woman, given by the football team of McKinley High, but that wasn’t the first thing to come to Santana’s mind. That honour went to the realisation that she probably shouldn’t have practically told Brittany that she’d slept around, partially because it was just sort of tacky to bring it up in a new relationship but mostly because she’d been judged for it by many a person, and she didn’t want Brittany to be one of them.

“That must mean you’re really good at it,” Brittany said without a hint of judgement.

Santana probably should have known.

“You know what,” she said. “Yeah, I’m damn good at it, and I’m going to make it great for you if we do it.”

Brittany smiled, and moved up to press a quick kiss to Santana’s nose. “But what is it?”

“It’s-“ Fuck. Santana had never realised it was possible to panic so badly while feeling so happy and content. Maybe they should have had this discussion somewhere else than cuddling on a bed. “You know that area between your legs?” Brittany nodded. “Have you ever touched it?”

Brittany furrowed her brow. “No. With these clothes, sometimes a little because some of my panties don’t fit so well.”

“Well, it, uhm, it feels really good when you do. You can do it to yourself, and that’s called masturbation, or you can do it to someone else and they can do it to you, and then it’s sex.” Santana paused to brace herself. “Guys have different stuff down there, but I’m not into them so I’ve done my best to forget everything about it. If you want to know about it, though, I can-“

“No,” Brittany said. “I want to be with you, and I don’t want to think about other people.” She bit her lip. “Everyone’s relationships on Mount Olympus always fall apart so maybe I’ll have a special gentleman friend one day, but my parents’ didn’t so you never know.” She smiled at Santana. “But now I just want to know about you and me.”

Santana returned the smile and rested her forehead against Brittany’s. “Okay.”

“What’s it like down there?” Brittany asked. “When I wipe it after peeing it seems like there’s something squishy, but I don’t really know much else.”

“I can’t really explain most of it, because I’ve forgotten like half the names, but you have the area that you can see if you open your legs and watch with a mirror – I’m not quite sure why you’d do that but that’s what all the guides always tell you to do – which is called vulva and then somewhere in the middle of it is an opening that leads to inside your body where there’s all sorts of stuff that’s to do with getting pregnant. The opening is called a vagina. Then there’s also the clitoris which you’ll probably like lots because basically its only function is to make you feel good when you’re touched there. It’s this small nub at the place where two symmetrical parts of your vulva – I forget what they’re called but they sort of look like lips in all the diagrammes – meet.”

Brittany looked pensive. “I don’t have a mirror like that,” she said. “Is it okay if I just put my hand down my pants and try to feel all those things you said?”

For a second, Santana stopped breathing. She knew – courtesy of Rachel Berry getting _far_ too drunk at one of her lame-ass parties slash sleepovers that Mercedes had first invited and then dragged Santana to – that it was entirely possible to do exactly what all those guides said and explore your genitals in a relatively sexless way, but with Brittany’s enthusiasm for sex and her (although the feeling was very much mutual, thank you) appreciation of Santana, plus the fact that they were already cuddling on a bed together, their bodies touching all the way down to their knees, Santana thought it pretty unlikely that whatever Brittany would end up wanting would have anything in common with whatever clinical procedure Rachel had described.

She’d thought she’d have a little more warning before she and Brittany would do something sexual. Not that _Santana_ really needed it (she’d been ready probably since she’d woken up next to Brittany that first morning), but she’d thought Brittany maybe would.

Then again, Brittany had asked her about sex less than five minutes into their acquaintance, so odds were good she was the kind of innocent virgin who just wanted to enjoy sex already.

And in any case, Santana had promised herself that she’d stop patronising Brittany, even if Brittany hadn’t noticed yet (because she would and she’d probably feel hurt), so she took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, go ahead.”

Brittany was going to decide what she wanted, and Santana was going to neither push nor put on the brakes when neither of them really wanted them.

Making that decision didn’t leave her any more prepared for the hotness of Brittany sliding her palm down her stomach and into her pyjama pants (rainbow unicorns; even that didn’t ruin it for Santana, not on Brittany), though.

“I feel hair,” Brittany said.

“Move your hand lower,” no, she wouldn’t do commands, “if you want to feel that stuff I told you about.”

For a moment, Brittany didn’t speak, but then-

“I think I found the lips.”

Her tone was so matter of fact, like her hand wasn’t down her pants and she wasn’t narrating her sexual exploration to her girlfriend, that Santana couldn’t help giggling.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”

“I didn’t mind.” Brittany glanced at Santana, but the slight movements on the fabric gave out that she hadn’t stilled her hand. “I like the way your body feels when you laugh when we’re cuddling. It makes me happy when you’re happy.”

“Same.”

After another short silence, Brittany frowned slightly.

“I think I pushed the tip of my finger into that vagina thing,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“Ye-“ Her voice felt so croaky in her own ears that she had to take a moment to answer to allow her mouth to get wetter. She could feel it wasn’t the only part of her body doing that. “Yeah. It’s- one of the ways to have sex.”

“Is it supposed to feel good? Mostly it just felt a little weird.”

“Most women don’t come – that’s what people call the point when it feels really, really good – from things moving in their vagina.” Santana swallowed. “Have you tried to find your clitoris?”

Brittany shook her head. “I thought I should go in order.”

“You don’t have to,” Santana said. “You can do whatever you like, and I’ll try to answer your questions if you want to know something more.”

Brittany didn’t answer, her face motionless in concentration for a moment until she let out a short, happy sound and broke into a smile.

“I think I found it.” Santana could see the fabric moving over Brittany’s hand. “How do you touch it?”

“Just- just whatever way feels good.”

She didn’t ask what Brittany did, and Brittany didn’t tell her. For a moment, they were both silent, save for Brittany’s increasingly laboured breaths.

Then Brittany spoke.

“Santana, will you put your hand on my stomach?”

Santana hastened to comply, placing her hand a respectable distance away from Brittany’s pyjama pants just in case Brittany had meant her words differently.

Brittany moved her head to look at Santana. “Under my shirt.”

Mouth dry, Santana inched her hand downwards before her fingertips reached the hem of Brittany’s shirt, pulling it up so that she could push her hand under. Her thumb found Brittany’s belly button and settled there, and the rest of her fingers started a small, soothing motion against Brittany’s toned stomach.

“Is that good?”

“Yeah,” Brittany said. “Can we kiss now?”

Santana let out a little laugh, because when could they not, and moved even closer to Brittany, pushing her lips against Brittany’s. It wasn’t one of their better kisses by any means; it was obvious Brittany’s mind wasn’t on the kiss, and sometimes when she did something she particularly enjoyed she even forgot to kiss back for a moment. But still, it was wonderful, exciting, _them_ , and Santana felt like she should maybe write poetry about the moment or say something out loud to Brittany. She stayed silent, obviously, but even the urge to do anything like that was new to her. Her previous relationships with girls had been nice, especially considering what had gone before them, but none of them compared even to kissing Brittany while Brittany touched herself.

It probably said a lot about Santana’s state of mind that the thought didn’t lead to anticipation about what would happen later on, but simply to more enjoyment of the present.

Brittany moved suddenly, a half-hearted attempt to bury her head in the pillow accompanied by a moan which probably gave out the reasoning behind it. The movement pushed Santana’s lips against Brittany’s throat, and after a second to reorient herself Santana began pressing light kisses against Brittany’s neck, raising up to give some to her jawline as well. Brittany’s hand (the one that wasn’t inside her pyjama pants) gripped at Santana’s side and then relaxed, and Santana might have imagined it, but she was pretty sure Brittany’s whole body did the same.

She continued kissing Brittany’s neck, but made her kisses even gentler, letting Brittany come down from her orgasm as slowly as she wanted.

“Coming is much nicer than going,” Brittany said once she’d caught her breath.

“No wiser words, Brit-Brit.”

For quite some time afterwards, Brittany was content to simply cuddle against Santana without a word, her wide smile saying everything that needed to be said about how she felt about what had happened.

“You didn’t do anything,” she said eventually, raising her head to look down at Santana’s body.

Santana could feel the wetness in her panties, and the prospect of pushing her hand down there to follow the path Brittany had just walked was very tempting, but she didn’t want to do that without Brittany’s permission, and she didn’t want to ask for that because Brittany was just so adorable to cuddle with.

“No,” she said. “This was about you, not me.”

“But what if _I_ want to make it about you?” Brittany bit her lip. “I think I’d really like touching you like that, too. Can I?”

It wasn’t really a question, was it? Not a genuine one, at least, and definitely not to Santana.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m- Pretty wet down there, so-“

“I got really wet when I touched myself.” Brittany ran her hand down Santana’s shirt, Santana’s body tingling in anticipation as Brittany’s hand got closer to the waistband of her sleep shorts. “Can you get wet without touching?”

“You can,” Santana said. “It happens when you feel really excited about something sexy, like when you touch yourself and it feels good or when you think about something sexy and your vagina sort of starts to do it in anticipation, I don’t really know.”

Brittany’s fingers paused, just inches away from Santana’s shorts.

“Did you think about something sexy? Was it me?”

“God, Brittany.” Santana wanted to laugh at the excited tone, but she also wanted to groan out of eagerness to get Brittany’s hand into her panties already. “You looked so hot when you did that, you were so sweet and eager and excited and I’m so glad you wanted me to help you do it.”

With a kiss to Santana’s shoulder, Brittany pushed her fingers into Santana’s pants. “I guess it’s my turn to help you now.”

It was clear Brittany wasn’t really experienced from the moment she began, but it was also equally clear how very little Santana cared about that. Brittany started by searching out all the things Santana had pointed out to her earlier, probably the same way she’d done to herself, just quicker, and she giggled a little at how sticky it all felt.

“I got like this only after the coming,” she said. “There was a little, but not so much. It was nice and slick.”

She pushed the tip of her forefinger into Santana’s vagina as if to ascertain it was there, and was about to pull out when she seemed to rethink that and gave Santana a curious look.

“Should I go on? You said sex can be like this, too, and what I did wasn’t really sex, was it?”

Not feeling at her most eloquent, Santana nevertheless forced herself to speak in full sentences.

“You can, if you want, but when I do it to myself I usually like it better when I touch the clitoris.”

“Okay,” Brittany said and moved her hand, and Santana wanted to laugh maniacally at the contrast between her no-nonsense words and the pleasure she got from Brittany’s fingers rubbing carefully at the general area before she found the clitoris.

It never ceased to amaze Santana how much better the same thing felt when someone else did it to her, and Brittany was absolutely no exception. She didn’t have much technique beyond simply brushing her finger repeatedly over the area, but it didn’t really matter because her other hand around Santana’s waist, stroking at a strip of bare skin in a way that shouldn’t have felt so good, and her lips on Santana’s helped Santana to reach the brink of orgasm quickly nonetheless.

She’d had sex – a lot, if you wanted to get judgy about it – and maybe Brittany wasn’t objectively speaking the best at it she’d been with, but still- There was something special (she’d hated the word ever since William Schuester had misused it gloriously and extensively way back during the Nude Erections era of Santana’s life, but it was the right one here) about it, something that made it better than even her hottest flings.

“I like that feeling,” Brittany said, and Santana forced herself out of the post-orgasmic haze to concentrate on Brittany.

“Coming?”

“That, too.” Brittany threw her arm over Santana’s body. “But I meant the feeling at the bottom of my stomach when you looked like that.”

Santana smiled at her before burying her face against Brittany’s neck. She didn’t know about the feeling in Brittany’s stomach, but her own was slowly radiating a soft warmth that she wanted to attribute to having just come but quite couldn’t.

It felt like it had more to do with Brittany specifically.

\---

When Santana thought about it later, she concluded that she’d run into Brittany on the streets of New York because she’d been too tired to go clubbing.

That didn’t mean that she suddenly developed any affection or even camaraderie towards her workload, which continued to be unfortunately large for someone trying to nurture a growing relationship.

The case in point: she was on her own bed, removing her make-up and smiling at her laptop where Brittany was smiling back thanks to Skype, instead of the two of them just spending the night together at Brittany’s (or at Santana’s, that wouldn’t really have mattered because apparently Kurt and Blaine the bowtie toy were already so well-established a couple that they slept together even when they were too tired for sex). Santana had never really cared about her English Literature 101 class (too much white dick feelings, it was like the professor had done it just to annoy her), but right now she hated it more than ever.

After they had sex for the first time, Santana had had grand plans of making sure it wouldn’t even occur to Brittany that anything would have changed, that they could still do all the sleepovers and kitchen explorations and sightseeing things and everything they’d done first as friends and then as not sexually active girlfriends, except that they now could also have sex. Of course, after the leisurely Sunday they’d mostly spent petting dogs in Central Park (not that Santana minded, really; what kind of a person didn’t like petting dogs?), Santana had been so busy she could barely make a few lunch dates and once spend five hours writing her chemistry report at Brittany’s kitchen table while Brittany tried (and largely succeeded) to bake every single type of cookie she could find a recipe for in her cookbooks.

As a small consolation, it seemed Brittany didn’t really need her company to entertain herself. She’d taken to doing dance practice in her tiny apartment, and Santana was sure one day she’d accidentally kick her feet through the drywall. She’d also seemed to become friends with the market stall lady who’d given her free apples, and spent a lot of time at the market helping the woman. Santana was also fairly sure she’d taken up texting Blaine the boyfriend, which really was not the first friendship Brittany could forge that she would have thought of, but whatever. At least the guy wouldn’t creep on Brittany. Small mercies and all that.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around so much,” she said to Brittany as she reached for more make-up remover. “Gunther keeps offering me these shifts and then sounding like the place will fall apart if I’m not there, I didn’t even know that sort of flattery worked on me.”

“Maybe you should ask him not to look at you.” Brittany was braiding her hair. “Some people have really unfair eyes.”

“He really doesn’t, though.” Santana laughed. “Gosh, you should come see me at work sometime, I can explain you my theory about how he’s actually part ogre. He’s got the bone structure down perfectly.”

“Maybe I should. Diana keeps bringing me apple pie when I help her at the market, and she says it’s so much better than cake, but I’ve never tasted cake. Does your work sell cake?”

“So many different flavours,” Santana said. “Haven’t you ever bought cake?” Brittany shook her head. “I think I need to side with Diana here. You should try it.”

“She asked if she can pay me.” Brittany shuffled with her cell phone a bit, and for a moment Santana only saw something blurry that was coloured a lot like Brittany’s walls. “Does that mean something in human world?”

Santana smiled. “I think it probably means that Diana is a nice person who doesn’t want to take advantage of the fact that you hang around her stall and do all her heavy lifting.”

“What’s so bad about advantage?” Brittany asked. “You didn’t want to take it either.”

“Nothing, really, it’s a turn of phrase.” Santana stretched her legs. “Someone who takes advantage of others is not a really nice person.”

Brittany tilted her head. “Does that mean that I should say she can pay me?”

“Well, you’ve certainly earned it. And it would probably help her conscience.” From what she’d gathered about Diana from Brittany, which admittedly might have all been biased information since Brittany really liked Diana, the woman probably slept badly at night knowing that she used unpaid recently-homeless labour on a regular basis, even if Brittany did have a remarkable ability to do things while looking like she was just loitering about. “What else have you been up to?”

Brittany told her happily about the dance videos she’d found on her phone, and how she’d almost crashed into her Aphrodite statue. Santana showed due enthusiasm for the dance moves (Brittany promised to show her, which Santana gladly accepted) while secretly mourning the fact that Aphrodite had survived the could-have-been crash.

“Have you thought about dance classes?” she asked. “You’d have more room, and I hear hobbies are a great way to meet people.”

“There are classes for dancing?” The picture became blurry again, which might have meant that Brittany was bouncing on her bed with excitement. “With many students?”

“Yeah,” Santana said. “We can look at them online at some point if you want. I can come, too, if we find something that I can fit into my schedule. Otherwise you’ll just have to show me everything you’ve learnt when you get home.”

“I will.” Brittany’s smile was distant, like she was already picturing how much she’d enjoy dance classes. “Maybe we can go to a bar, too, at some point. When we were there the last time I kept imagining that we’d kiss on the dance floor but I thought you didn’t want to.”

Santana ducked her head. “Trust me, I really, really wanted to. I just- I didn’t realise yet that I could.”

“Well now you know.” Brittany gave her a bright smile. “It’s going to be great.”

Santana had no problems returning the smile. “Yeah.”

\---

She had work the following day, and didn’t get the chance to look at her phone too often. Brittany knew that, but she had a habit of sending Santana text after text anyway. Not that Santana really minded; it was great to get off work to the tune of seventeen random text messages from Brittany.

The following day, though, one of them was not something she’d anticipated.

_What are taxes? Not the cars but the percentages that pay for the pavement under the market._

Santana read through it again, her frown deepening. She glanced around, as if customers and co-workers would automatically know she was looking at something fishy.

How was it possible that, despite the amount of time she’d spent thinking about everything, she’d given no thought at all to getting Brittany the essential documents she’d need for such simple things as getting a job. She had no idea how the subject hadn’t come up with Brittany’s landlady, but considering the glaring problem in front of her, she didn’t have much energy to spare for the bullet they’d managed to dodge without realising it.

Well, at least Brittany had the looks to be forgiven in at least some cases. No one would think that a white girl like her was an undocumented immigrant or something.

But that was only a short-term solution, and in any case it wouldn’t help with the situation Brittany would find herself in when Diana would start asking questions about all the paperwork that Brittany was unable to provide her with. Santana’s knowledge of such stuff was mostly from watching _CSI_ and other similar franchises, so she couldn’t vouch for the accuracy of much of the knowledge that she had.

Oh god, she was seriously considering finding a forger or whatever to draw up false papers for Brittany. When had her life actually become the crime show drama that she had pretended in high school it was?

“Aren’t you leaving?” Gunther asked, surly as always, as he walked past Santana. “I’m not paying you for the time you spend loitering around here after your shift.”

“Yeah, ‘cause your wages are so high it’d be worth it,” Santana muttered, but she moved away and out onto the street.

She texted Brittany that she’d drop by and talk to her then, and then proceeded to worry the whole subway ride, her stomach feeling like it was full of knots.

Of course, now that the housing seemed to be on the clear due to whatever divine intervention, Brittany could probably live with relative ease without any of the papers, as long as Santana could solve the situation with Diana. She’d not met the woman, but she’d got a very clear picture of a kind person who gave out free fruit to the homeless and offered a job to one of them as well. Perhaps she would even be sympathetic to the situation if they told her about it. Then again, she could also report it to the authorities, and while Santana logically knew that Brittany would probably gather some sympathy, given who she was and how she looked, Santana didn’t really trust the police given who _she_ was.

Maybe she could google her way out of this, too. It definitely seemed to be the harmless way to try and find out how to proceed. But what would she search for? For a moment, she really wished her life actually was a crime show, because at least then she could have googled the exact question and found a super helpful how-to guide on getting papers for someone who couldn’t give a place of birth or any identification, all without much effort.

By the time she resurfaced, she’d worried herself sick and it didn’t take more than Brittany opening her door for Santana to start babbling.

“We could find you forged papers,” she said. “It’s super illegal and I can’t go to court with this face unless I decide to do pre-law after all, but we could try that, it’s possible, we just have to-“

“What’s a forge?” Brittany asked, smiling far too wide for someone who’d made Santana consider committing crime that wasn’t a homicide. “Does it have anything to do with that thing at his work that Kurt was talking about?”

“No,” Santana said, forcing herself to calm down a little. She had to be cool and collected to help. Panic was of no use. “A farce is a different thing. I’m talking about what we’re going to do to convince Diana not to need any papers for your pay, and then we’ll have to solve the problem of your not having any in the first place.”

Brittany frowned a little. “But I do?”

Santana frowned more. “But you don’t. I saw your bag the weekend we met; you had nothing.”

“Oh.” Brittany’s face cleared. “I didn’t. But Hermes brought me stuff when he visited and said that he figured I’d need them.”

Damned Hermes. As if Santana hadn’t hated the guy enough already.

“What stuff?” she asked.

Brittany had stashed it under her bed in a shoebox, and Santana almost dropped her jaw when she began looking at all of it.

Birth certificate (Brittany _was_ eighteen, if only barely; they’d met on her birthday, no Santana wasn’t a sap for immediately recognising the date), high school and other school reports (no academic achievements to speak of, but everyone always said the high school tests were BS anyway), even a passport.

And the paperwork for a bank account, not to mention a trust fund. Santana of two months ago might have fainted just from seeing how much money Brittany had, but Santana of two months ago hadn’t held price-y Greek coins and stored them in her desk drawer.

Santana shook her head. She had no idea what kind of cult bestowed such gifts on a member who was leaving them.

Well, maybe it was reassuring Santana hadn’t been involved in possession and sale of stolen property.

“So,” she said, hoping Brittany would forget about her freak-out at the door. “Brittany S. Pierce, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” Brittany said. “Isn’t it a nice name? They heard I liked that song Brittany Spears sung at the club and that she was my idol for that night. I do hope I don’t always have to live in her shadow, though.”

Santana wanted to frown at her words, but she had not yet mastered understanding Brittany’s way of speaking; maybe she’d learn some day what Brittany had meant by choosing a name. It sounded like something her literature professor would go nuts for, the symbolism of a name and all.

“I bet not, Brit-Brit,” she said. “You’re a star on your own. Can you tell me one thing, though?”

“Of course.”

“Why’d you ask me about taxes if you already had all this stuff?”

Brittany bit her lip. “Diana asked me about papers yesterday, stuff she needs for her records, and when I got them to her today she said something about how I could pay taxes, and she said something about the pavement, I don’t really remember. And I nodded and smiled because I didn’t want to ask her what taxes are, so I asked you.”

Santana felt incredibly foolish; the feeling was only overshadowed by the incredible feeling of relief over how everything was going to be magically okay and she wouldn’t have to try to track down career criminals in what sounded a lot like the world’s cheesiest lesbian film ever.

“I’m just glad everything works out,” she said. “I panicked a little when I got that text.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t know he’d given you that stuff.”

Brittany hang her head. “I should have told you.”

Santana shook her head. “From what I remember of that evening, that wasn’t exactly at the top of my list of priorities.”

Brittany’s lips quirked up into a small smile. “I liked your priorities.”

“Me too.” Santana reached for Brittany’s hand. “And you don’t have to tell me everything. I’m not I charge of your life; you are. I’d like to hear a lot, because you’re my girlfriend and I want to know everything about you, but you can take care of yourself without me watching over your shoulder.”

“I like it when you watch over my shoulder. Your chin feels so nice on my shoulder, and your hair is so tickly against my cheek.”

Santana laughed, reaching forwards to give the top of Brittany’s nose a quick kiss. “I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Sugar,” Brittany said.

“Even sweeter.”

Brittany got a suddenly pensive look on her face.

“Does that wet thing I got on my fingers when we had sex taste sweet?”

Santana tilted her head. “No, not really. I can’t really describe how it tastes?”

“Can we have sex again then so that I can lick my fingers? And also because I really liked having sex with you.”

Santana smirked at her, pulling Brittany against her side. “You know, there’s something else we could do. If you wanted. Then you wouldn’t have to lick your fingers.”

Brittany smiled. “Can I just lick you? Like last time but with my tongue?”

Sometimes her intuition was creepily good.

“Yeah,” Santana said. “That’s something you can do. Or I can do it to you, whatever you want. Or we could do it with fingers again, or just cuddle if you’d like that the best.”

“I want to,” Brittany said, all eager earnestness and excitement like maybe Santana wouldn’t be quite sure about letting her. “If it’s just okay with you.”

Santana hoped her voice came out sexy, but she couldn’t quite help the feeling that it was far goofier than she’d intended. Brittany had that effect on her. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be a lot better than ‘just okay’.”

Brittany’s face lit up. “Can we do it now?”

“We should probably move onto the bed.”

They did, and after an odd fraction of a moment during which they just stared at each other, they surged forwards at the same time to kiss each other. Soon enough, they were making out lying on the bed.

Brittany pulled away after a while, looking excited. “How is it done?”

“Which way did you want to-“

“I want to do it to you.”

“I should undress then.”

Brittany watched with fascination as Santana wrangled her dress off herself and dumped it on the floor by the bed.

Santana always felt a little foolish at that point; she was very certain of her own good looks, but tights were not the sexy wonders that garter belts were, and in any case it was awkward to be more naked than your companion. This time, though, it felt oddly natural. Brittany’s eyes were definitely on her, and on her body, but it was that same warm, curious gaze she directed at everything, except maybe a little more appreciative.

Still, it wasn’t nice to let Brittany look at something that didn’t look as smoking as it could, so Santana squirmed out of her tights and propped herself up with her elbows, letting Brittany admire her underwear-clad body.

That Brittany did, but fairly soon she asked, “So should I take your panties off now? I don’t think cotton tastes very nice.”

“Yeah, just a sec.” Santana let her upper body down and lifted her hips, starting to push off her underwear. She didn’t get very far, though, before Brittany’s hands covered hers.

“Can I?”

“Go ahead.”

Brittany eased off the underwear all the way to Santana’s knees, which was when Santana let down her hips and raised her legs slightly to allow Brittany to remove the panties completely. Brittany dropped them on the floor and looked to Santana curiously.

“What now?”

Santana wasn’t exactly known for being modest, but there was still something about throwing one of her legs on the other side of Brittany that made her feel incredibly vulnerable in ways the gesture itself didn’t imply.

“Whatever you want, I guess.”

Luckily, Brittany didn’t have a pretending bone in her body and so her comfort with the situation was not actually faked, so she moved onto her stomach to get her face closer to Santana’s hips with fluidity that made Santana wonder how long she’d actually danced. Maybe she should bring up the matter with Brittany’s dance teacher.

All thoughts of anything not to do with the present vanished swiftly from her mind, though, as she felt Brittany’s hair brush against her thigh just before Brittany’s finger trailed up Santana’s vulva to the clitoris, just brushing against it before disappearing.

“It looks really nice here,” Brittany said. “I didn’t really know what it would be like so I just imagined it like a blank place where your hand makes everything feel great.”

Santana couldn’t help the burst of laughter. It probably looked weird from Brittany’s perspective, but she couldn’t really bring herself to care, not when Brittany was sliding her finger against the folds again. The touch wasn’t really doing much for her, per se, but the knowledge that it was Brittany and the expectation of what was to come were enough to make the simple touch exciting and pleasurable.

“You said I could taste the wet stuff,” Brittany said. “Can I?”

She wanted to laugh again, but suppressed the urge. “Yeah. You can do whatever you want, I’m really into it anyway.”

Brittany lowered her head, and Santana knew what was going to happen before it did, but that didn’t prepare her for the feeling of Brittany’s tongue on her. Letting out a soft gasp, she closed her eyes, body tense with pleasure, as Brittany licked up a few stripes before a small pause during which she probably moved her head because the next time Santana felt her, she very purposefully pressed her tongue against Santana’s clitoris and moved it around. Santana brought her hand to her breast, teasing over her bra, before pushing her fingers inside.

It didn’t take long for Brittany to take up multitasking; her tongue kept moving, even dipping slightly inside Santana’s vagina for a short while, but within a few minutes Brittany brought her fingers into the mix, first with hesitation and then more surely. She caressed Santana’s clitoris while licking at the folds, and then switched with her tongue starting to play with the clitoris while her fingers explored everything else. There was maybe more enthusiasm than skill, really, but Santana happened to think that in certain cases, that was far more important and it seemed that whatever part of her brain that controlled sex concurred. She came within minutes, panting Brittany’s name like it was the only word in the world. (It didn’t help that it was really easy to replace ‘god’ with ‘Brit’ in that particular instance.)

Brittany stopped and pulled away just as she was about to get oversensitive.

“Was that an earthquake?” she asked. “It feels different like this.”

Santana let out a deep breath. “It does.” She flashed a smile at Brittany. “You’re amazing.”

“I know,” Brittany said. “You’re amazing, too. And really delicious.”

Santana quirked an eyebrow. “So I take it you like the taste of that?”

Brittany nodded. “I want to have it every day.”

“I certainly wouldn’t be opposed.”

Brittany crawled up the bed to cuddle against Santana. “What were you doing with your hand up here?”

“I was touching my boobs.”

Looking down at her shirt front, Brittany seemed to consider the information. “Does it feel good?”

“I like it. I mean, they’re not really that sensitive, for me, but it’s nice. And I didn’t want to accidentally pull at your hair.”

“Can you touch mine? I think you said something about how everything feels better when someone else does it and you’re really smart so it’s probably true.”

Santana responded by action, pushing her hand up Brittany’s t-shirt and running her fingers lightly over Brittany’s breast where it wasn’t covered by Brittany’s bra. Brittany let out a pleased sound.

“I’m going take off my t-shirt,” she said, and Santana pulled away her hand to let her do just that.

Brittany took off her bra as well, and Santana took in the sight of her bare chest.

“You can touch, too,” Brittany said. “Your eyes are really hot, but sometimes I like your hands better.”

Santana cuddled against Brittany’s side, nudging at Brittany’s cheek until Brittany turned her head so that they could kiss. She ran her hand up Brittany’s toned stomach and as she reached them, began playing with her breasts, teasing at the nipples and trying to read Brittany’s reactions for what felt good.

After some time, though, she pulled away from Brittany’s lips. “Do you want me to…?”

She didn’t really know how to finish the sentence, but the vague hand movement down Brittany’s body was easily understood in the context.

“Touch me,” Brittany said. “With your hands. They’re really nice and warm and I really liked what I did for me so yours must be really great.”

There was a bit of shuffling with Brittany getting rid of her trousers and underwear, but it didn’t take long until she was lying on the bed, completely naked, legs spread just the tiniest bit in what was the most effortlessly and accidentally sexy pose Santana had ever seen.

She started with kissing Brittany, again, and just running her fingers along Brittany’s stomach, the muscles tensing at the unexpected touches and Brittany squirming a little, trying to get Santana’s hand where she wanted it. Santana didn’t tease her for long, pushing her hand past Brittany’s pubic hair and dipping her fingertips in the wetness oozing out of Brittany’s vagina before going back for her clit.

As her hand was occupied, Brittany’s breasts were left untouched, and Santana broke their kiss to ask, “Can I kiss at your breasts?”

She felt like an idiot for the way she phrased her question – Brittany could pull that off and still be hot, but it most definitely wasn’t Santana’s style – but Brittany didn’t seem to mind.

“Yes, please.”

She had to arrange her body into an awkward angle to do it, but she could feel Brittany’s enjoyment even without words (ones that meant anything, at least), so it was worth it. It didn’t take long for Brittany to come, her hand clutching at Santana’s arm and a long, deep sigh of contentment escaping her lips.

“You’re so right,” Brittany said once Santana had licked her fingers clean and Brittany had had time to get back to her normal breathing. “It’s so much better when someone else does it.”

“Tell me about it.”

They lay in silence for a moment before Brittany spoke up.

“Next time, can you use your mouth? You liked it a lot and I want to know what it’s like.”

“You know,” Santana said, throwing her arm around Brittany, fingers splaying across Brittany’s stomach, just over where the waistband of her panties would settle at if she was wearing any, “there’s this one wonderful thing about us girls.”

“What?”

“We can go however many times we like.” She shot Brittany a smile. “How about we cuddle just for a moment and then see about that mouth thing.”

Brittany smiled back, pressing a quick kiss against Santana’s shoulder.

“Let’s.”

\---

Despite the happy conclusion, the episode did remind Santana very effectively that she didn’t know Diana at all. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; Brittany could take care of herself, and she seemed to have very good intuition about people, at least if all the good people she’d managed to stumble upon were any indication. But it was clear that she was more than Brittany’s employer (and she’d obviously been a friend even before that), and meeting your girlfriend’s friends was never a bad idea. Well, it could be, but not if your intentions were as pure as Santana’s.

“She sounds really nice,” she said one evening on Skype after Brittany had told her something about the market and how Diana had given free tomatoes to a passer-by. “I’d like to meet her.”

Brittany did a little jump out of excitement. “You could walk me from work to dance class! Kurt showed me one of those movies he likes and he thought it was very romantic when that happened.”

“Yeah, he would,” Santana muttered, but it sort of was, and when had she ever said no to hanging out with Brittany? “I’m free tomorrow.”

“I’ll see you then,” Brittany said.

\---

Santana didn’t especially prepare for the meeting. She did pick her clothes in the morning based on effortless and fashionable intimidation, yes, and she didn’t usually pop in to the bathroom to check her make-up before leaving campus, but that was all reasonable deviation. She did it mostly for the fun of it, not that she’d ever admit to having picked such dramatic habits from Rachel Berry if she ever was asked about it. In no way whatsoever was she planning on verifying that Brittany’s friend was as benevolent as she appeared to be.

Well, she wasn’t until she arrived, kissed Brittany hello, listened to Brittany’s account of the mice Brittany thought she’d seen, and glanced at Diana in the middle of Brittany’s sentence.

Diana was an elderly woman and dressed the part, hair in a bun and a knee-length skirt and a pullover completing the look, but something about her expression struck Santana. It didn’t go with the ‘friendly granny’ thing at all; it was giving more of a Mrs Trunchbull vibe if Santana was allowed to exaggerate a little. Like Diana was not quite pleased.

If it had been someone Brittany cared less about, Santana would have made a comment, maybe asked her if she’d thought Brittany being bi would mean she’d swiftly get a boyfriend and never speak of loving girls again so that Diana could just pretend she was straight, but it wasn’t. Santana flashed her a quick smile, but she knew she couldn’t disguise the wariness.

“I do wonder if they were trying to get at that pumpkin to make a home for themselves,” Brittany was saying. “I almost feel bad for taking it away.”

“I’m sure they already have a home of their own, Brittany,” Diana said, and at least she didn’t sound annoyingly condescending or anything of the kind towards Brittany. “There’s plenty of space here to build a nice little mouse home.” She turned to Santana. “Hi, I’ve heard a lot about you. Diana.”

Santana took the offered hand, and her handshake was as firm as Diana’s. “Santana. Likewise.”

“She’s my favourite person in the whole world,” Brittany said to Diana, reaching to take Santana’s hand. “You’re great, too, but she’s the best. She braids my hair when she stays over.”

“Maybe I can deal with that.” Diana smiled at Brittany, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes which were looking at Santana anyway. “It’s only fair since my favourite person is the one who bakes me apple pie every Sunday, and that’s definitely not you.”

“The apple pie is really good, too,” Brittany said, this time clearly to Santana. “You’re the best, but apple pie is maybe the second-best.”

Santana had got used to Brittany’s were-those-innuendos-or-not, but she wasn’t quite sure about Diana. A quick glance told her that either Diana was, or then she hadn’t caught it. Hopefully, the latter, and not only because Santana didn’t really like discussing her sex life out in the open where bored husbands were walking behind their wives looking like the worst thing to happen to them ever was grocery-shopping and might hear.

“Well, that’s not right,” she said. “You’re clearly the best.”

“Yeah,” Brittany said. “I am. But you’re still better than apple pie, and you’re the best, too.” She turned to Diana and said, like she was referring to something from a previous conversation, “See, it works because we’re both so good.”

“I can see that,” Diana said, and for the first time Santana felt like she was not being blatantly assessed and found at least a little lacking.

She wouldn’t really admit it if pressed, but it did wonders for her own view of Diana. That, and the fact that Diana obviously treated Brittany like a person, not like a charity project to potentially exploit.

A customer came wander to check out the cucumbers and Diana excused herself to go see if she could be of assistance.

“Are you off soon?” Santana asked.

“I have fifteen minutes left.” Brittany squeezed Santana’s hand. “Do you want to see the potatoes I saw today? One of them reminded me of you because it was so pretty.”

She’d never thought she’d take it as a compliment to be compared to a potato. Apparently it was true that love made you an idiot.

Realising what she’d just thought, Santana bit her lip, ridiculously afraid that it would be visible all over her face. Brittany wasn’t even looking at her, though, and was instead going through the potatoes with vigour they probably didn’t deserve. She emerged with a weird-looking one that Santana had to admit had some inexplicable visual appeal and Santana told her as much.

“I asked Diana, and she said I could give it to you,” Brittany said.

Santana looked down at the potato. It was the weirdest gift from a girlfriend she’d ever got, but somehow, she found herself a little sad that the thing would wilt and go bad and she’d have to throw it away. “Is it okay if I eat it? It’d be rude to just throw it away after it goes bad.”

“You could plant it,” Diana said, appearing at Santana’s side, the customer obviously having made her choice already. “Brittany mentioned that she has a balcony. It might not make new potatoes, but at least it’d last a little longer.”

Santana flashed her a surprised smile. “That’s a good idea. Thank you,” she said to Brittany, “and thank you.”

Diana waved her hand and returned the smile. “I’m not going to go belly up due to one potato. You’re welcome.” She turned to Brittany. “Do you want to leave a little early? I can handle it, and it’s my experience that keeping your girlfriend waiting is not good for your relationship.”

“Okay.” Brittany looked around. “I need to get my bag from the van.”

“I’ll get a bag for that potato while you do that,” Diana said. “I doubt Santana’s all too keen on getting dirt on her bag.”

Brittany went skipping towards what probably was the place Diana kept her van, and Santana followed Diana to the box under the tables where bags were kept.

“I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of you,” Diana said, her back to Santana as she dug into the box. “This should do,” she said as she emerged with a transparent plastic bag in one hand. She opened the bag and held it as Santana slid the potato in.

“Is that why you were looking at me like a disappointed grandmother for a while?” Santana asked. She liked people who didn’t try to hide behind indirectness.

Diana chuckled. “If you want to think about it like that.” Her expression turned deadly serious. “You’ll have to excuse me for being a little doubtful when Brittany turned up here for the second time full of stories about the nice lady who let her sleep in her bed, coupled with the comments about how she has money to get her own place now.”

Santana shuffled a little, eyes on the ground. “When you say it like that…”

“I just wanted to see for myself,” Diana said. “Brittany can take care of herself, that much is obvious, but the best of us get fooled sometimes. I didn’t have to watch the two of you for long, to know I had no reason to worry, if that’s any consolation.”

Santana nodded. “I probably didn’t help with getting so suspicious so quickly.”

“All that matters is that we both have her best interest at heart,” Diana said. “She’s really something special, and from what I gather from her, so are you.”

Santana didn’t often allow herself to smile that small, happy smile, devoid of any sort of snark or sarcasm, but she did then. “I don’t know too many people who’d offer her a job, either.”

“I’m ready!” Brittany was next to them, full of excitement and energy, before Diana could answer. “Can we go be romantic now?”

“Yeah, Brit,” Santana said, taking her hand. “Let’s go be romantic.”

They waved at Diana as they went, and Diana waved back with a smile.

\---

“Can you come over today after dance practice?” Brittany asked as they approached the studio she had her lessons in. “I want to get our cuddles on. I felt cold last night.”

It was a quick decision. She’d meant to work on her chem project, but it wasn’t due for over a week and it wasn’t like cuddling Brittany was necessarily incompatible with studying. Brittany liked to listen to Santana read, even if it was about volumes of gases or something that Santana personally didn’t give a damn about.

“I could wait at the studio until you get off,” she suggested. “It’s a one-hour class, right?”

Brittany nodded, jumping up with excitement so that her bag almost fell from her shoulder. “Great!”

They were a little early, and the studio was small, so there was pretty much no one there, except for a woman in a brightly coloured dress lounging on one of the sofas in the reception area and browsing through what looked like a college textbook that Brittany immediately skipped towards.

“Tina! Hi!”

The woman, Tina, turned around and smiled.

“Brittany!” She glanced at Santana and flashed a smile. “It’s great to see you; Mike just popped out to get some gum, but he’ll be back in a few minutes.

“Santana, this is Tina,” Brittany said. “Tina, this is Santana. She’s my girlfriend.”

Tina looked down at their joined hands. “I thought so. Nice to meet you, Santana.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

“Are you going to be here for the whole class?” Brittany asked Tina. “Santana’s waiting for me because we’re going to cuddle after class, so you could keep each other company.”

“Yeah, I’ll be here,” Tina said. “Mike’s parents are in town so we’re going to have dinner with them after class. I need to get some studying done before that, though,” she said with an apologetic look at Santana. “Sorry, I won’t be much company, but…”

“That’s great,” Santana said. “I had meant to get a head start on my chemistry project, so we could be anti-social together.”

Tina flashed her a smile. Santana didn’t usually make friends that easily, but something told her Tina might be willing to be and worth making an exception.

With a kiss to Santana’s cheek, Brittany left for the locker rooms and Tina pushed her bag on the floor so that Santana could sit down next to her.

For a while, they really just sat together and studied their respective subjects (Santana only peaked enough to see Tina was reading something about commedia dell’arte). A man, Santana assumed Mike, passed them with a brief touch to Tina’s shoulder and went to the men’s locker room, and after that a few other people, probably dance students for Brittany’s class, did too, but after clock was five to, practically all movement died down. Soon enough, Santana could make out faint sounds of music and some talk, probably from the dance class.

At quarter past or so, Tina let out a sigh and put away her book.

“I’ll learn nothing more if I go on like this, my head’s too full already.” She got up. “Do you want some water? The owner is a serious health nut so I’m afraid there’s no coffee on the premises.”

“Thanks.” Santana put her own book aside as well, all too glad for an interruption. She was planning to get ahead on her work, not discover any actual love for chemistry; she could take a break.

Tina passed behind the receptionist’s desk and into the backroom, and came back after a while balancing two glasses of water and a small basket full of biscuits.

“There’s perks to dating one of the instructors,” she said as she set the basket between the two of them. “I don’t really care for oatmeal cookies but better than nothing for a sugar craving, right?”

Santana nodded, biting into one. “I had a cheerleading coach in high school who demoted you to the bottom of the pyramid if she caught wind of you having eaten sweets. I’m easy to satisfy.”

Tina shook her head. “How’d she even find out?”

“She used to say she could smell sugar up to three days after intake but I’m pretty sure she just threatened the local shopkeepers to find out who bought any. She was a scary lady.”

They munched on the biscuits for a while in silence.

“So,” Tina said eventually, “you and Brittany. Is that new or…? When I think about it, I think she’s spoken a lot about you for the whole time I’ve known her, but then again I only met her when she started taking Mike’s classes, so.”

“A couple of months.” Santana didn’t really want to get into it, for all the normal reasons and then for all the rest of it. Sharing something so personal as in what kind of circumstances they’d met was not up to Santana, not when it practically revealed a lot of private things to someone who was, after all, almost a stranger to Santana. Brittany had acted like she knew Tina better, but you never knew with Brittany. “Before the classes, but not by that much. How about you and Mike?”

Tina blushed a little and quickly took a bite of another biscuit. She chewed carefully and only answered once she’d swallowed.

“Uh, high school sweethearts actually. We’ve been together since my sophomore year.”

“Wow.” Santana had a sneaking suspicion they’d been one of those annoying couples who ate each other’s face in public; she just got that vibe. But she hadn’t been forced to see them specifically do it so she felt more benevolent towards such behaviour than normally. “That’s- a long time.”

“Yeah.” Tina’s smile looked like she didn’t see Santana at all. “It is. The long distance was a bit rough when he moved to New York a year before me, but… It was worth it.”

Santana nodded. She wasn’t really good at cooing over others’ love stories.

“Brittany’s told me good things about him,” she said eventually. “Apparently he’s the best dancer she’s seen since Ze- sliced bread.”

Tina gave her a well-deserved odd look, but it would probably have been odder if Santana had actually repeated Brittany’s words verbatim.

“He’s great,” Tina said. “His parents wanted him to become a doctor but in the end even they had to admit that dance is his true calling.” She gave Santana a lop-sided smile. “Although to be fair to them, when they got it, they got it incredibly well. They’re really annoyed they’re missing the dance show next month.”

That rang a bell.

“I think Brittany mentioned that,” Santana said. “She’s going to be in it, isn’t she?”

Tina nodded. “It’s part of Mike’s school project, and he was really excited when Brittany signed up because apparently now he can put in this one bit of choreography that he didn’t trust anyone else to pull off. Do you know where Brittany danced before she came here? From what Mike’s telling me, she’s really good.”

“I didn’t think to ask,” Santana said. “I think she mentioned something about her parents, or family friends, I don’t really remember. I think a lot of it is just that she loves it so much.”

She wasn’t really lying, was she? With any luck, Tina would forget about it and not ask Brittany, who doubtlessly would cheerfully tell her that gods had taught her.

“Mmmm.” Tina picked up her textbook again. “That always helps. At least for me, my eight am acting class is a lot easier to get to than the nine am physics class.”

Santana expressed her agreement and they went back to their studying again. This time, though, it was occasionally interspersed with a quick exchange of words when Tina found a particularly hilarious bit of history in her reading or when Santana got curious about Tina’s studies.

An hour of studying chemistry had never passed so quickly.

Eventually, people began to trickle out from the locker rooms. Brittany was among the first, practically running to Santana, her hair still wet enough to drip water down to her t-shirt. They said goodbye to Tina who also began to slowly pack her stuff in anticipation of Mike emerging as well, and left the studio.

“Did you have a good class?” Santana asked as they walked towards the metro, hands brushing against each other.

“It was dancing,” Brittany said like that was an answer to the question. In a very Brittany-esque way, it probably was.

“I spoke with Tina,” Santana said after a bit of silence. “She mentioned the dance show you were talking about last week. When is it exactly? I’ll have to make a note on my calendar so that I can threaten Gunther to give me a free night then.”

Brittany didn’t remember the exact date, but she’d written it down somewhere, so once they got to Brittany’s, they first turned the place upside down to find her note and only then cuddled on the bed.

“I’ve seen a lot of this world now,” Brittany said as they began to doze off. “But you’re still my absolute favourite, here or elsewhere.”

“Thanks.” She didn’t waste time to wonder what ‘elsewhere’ referred to; she was too sleepy for that. “You’re my absolute favourite, too.”

Brittany tightened her hold on Santana’s waist, but Santana was too tired to do anything than let out an incoherent, satisfied noise.

\---

“Blaine asked me which one was more romantic for a four-month anniversary date, a picnic or a home-cooked meal,” Brittany said one day as she was wiping down the kitchen counter after an unfortunate incident with the electric mixer.

Santana had just managed to wipe most of the dough off her copy of _Ulysses_ , not that cookie dough wasn’t an improvement on the monotony of the book. “If you ask Kurt, the height of romance is someone who’s sappy enough to care about a four-month anniversary in the first place, so he probably shouldn’t worry too much.”

“He wasn’t worrying,” Brittany said. “He just wanted to make it the best day it could be.”

“Not surprising.” She _was_ a little resentful of the fact that she couldn’t help liking Blaine. “I’ve never met anyone so damn earnest, and I’ve met you so that’s really saying something.”

“It made me think, though.” Brittany gave up on the counter and turned to face Santana. “I’ve never taken you out on a date. He said that you probably don’t mind, but then he got super nervous about Kurt thinking he’s taking him for granted if he doesn’t fold the napkins into swans and I think his point got a little lost in the pond.”

“He would,” Santana said. “Also thanks for the heads-up on the swans. If he does that, Kurt’s going to be too in love for weeks to realise I’m eating his cheesecake.”

Brittany shook her head. “Should I take you out?” she asked. “It always sounds so weird because Mum always told me to take out the rubbish and you’re not rubbish at all, but I always liked eating dates and maybe it would be nice to go on one as well.”

Santana pushed the thoughts of Kurt’s excellent raspberry-chocolate cheesecake out of her mind.

“I don’t mind just seeing you here or at my place,” she said after a while. “But dates can be a lot of fun, so if you want to go, we can definitely go.”

“Can we do it tomorrow?” Brittany asked. “You have work after that, and then you’re really excited about your friend Mercedes coming to visit and you probably want us to hang out with her, which is cool because the cars always look friendly so she must be friendly as well, but I don’t think she’d like to come to our date.”

Santana snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think she’s exactly charmed by the idea of being a third wheel.”

“We could ask Kurt, too, and then there would be four wheels and the cart would be balanced.”

“That we could.” It probably would be difficult to spend extended times with Mercedes without Kurt coming as well; they were really good friends too. But if Brittany wanted to go on a date, the combination would just be hilariously wrong in a slightly depressing way, given their history. “But we probably should go on the date, just the two of us.”

\---

Santana smoothed the front of her dress, hoping the movement wouldn’t come off self-conscious. It probably was, at least a little, but there was no way she was going to admit to it even under torture. From her side, Brittany was beaming at her like they were not just a few moments away from announcing they had reservations at one of the pricier restaurants Santana passed on her way to work. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she’d do much worse things for Brittany than dine in an expensive restaurant at someone else’s expense.

Still. She thought back to that time she’d paid for Brittany’s pizza at her and Kurt’s favourite local diner. They’d taken their food to-go because with a cursory look, Santana couldn’t see a single clean seat in the whole place.

And she’d thought that would even the scales at least a little.

She took another controlled breath as the couple in front of them moved to their assigned table and it was her and Brittany’s turn.

“Evening,” she said and hoped she sounded like she dined in places like this often. “We had a reservation for two under Pierce.”

The maître d’ glanced down at her book. “Ah, yes,” she said, and at least it was with a smile. Santana breathed a little easier. “Table number thirteen, to the left and then onwards, behind the first statue.”

It was only when they were sat at the table and had ordered their starters that Santana felt she could breathe easier. Her father was a doctor, they hadn’t been poor by any means at any point in her life; she was used to eating at restaurants, even if Breadstix in no way compared to this place.

“Is this place date-appropriate?” Brittany asked from the other side of the table, completely serious. “You look worried, and I don’t think dates should worry people. Did I ruin it already before it started?”

“No!” Santana let out a deep breath. “You didn’t ruin anything, Brittany, this is a very good place for a date and I’m sure there’re a lot of other people who are on a date here, right now. It’s just-“ she looked down at the menu, “it’s a little more high-end than I’m accustomed to, and it’s just the tiniest bit nerve-wrecking.”

Brittany, who was dressed one of her owl-print dresses and felt hat, accessorised with copious amounts of bright necklaces made of small bits of wood, and still managed to look comfortable and not totally out of place, didn’t look like she actually understood, but she reached her hand across the table towards Santana anyway.

“I could hold your hand,” she said. “For encouragement. We can do it under a napkin if you’re afraid people will see and judge.”

Santana laughed and suddenly it felt easier to be there. “I think I can survive. But we could still hold hands.”

They did until they got their salads, at which point they had to withdraw their hands to be able to eat.

“I really like earth cheese,” Brittany said. “We usually only get goat’s cheese on Olympus, and it’s really good too but the mouldy one is still the best.”

“Blue cheese,” Santana corrected without any force behind it. “And ewww, I’m so glad that’s only the starter so that the taste will get out of your mouth before we’re done eating.”

“Do you want to eat at home, too?” Brittany asked. “Kurt and Blaine never mentioned about dates ending like that, but in all their films it happens, or then it’s a big deal that it won’t happen yet, and it sounds really nice.”

Santana smiled. “I’d like that.”

The idea of going home to have sex with Brittany, without any hurry or time constraints (except for her alarm the next morning, but who even counted that?), was so pleasant that she almost missed the obvious opener to inquire into Brittany’s past. She’d learned more along the weeks, of course, but it still felt like there was a lot she could learn.

“You said you ate goat’s cheese a lot,” she said. “What else? What was your favourite food?”

“I like dates.” Brittany’s smile was really self-satisfied, but in a cute way. “Right now, I think dates are the best.”

Her foot brushed against Santana’s, and Santana pushed against it a little, just to let Brittany know she’d noticed.

“I think dates are great, too,” she said. “Anything else?”

“Honey,” Brittany said. “I liked it on bread and in yoghurt. Sometimes we ate rabbit and lamb but they were all really cute before they were killed so that was a little sad, and I don’t think your favourite food should make you sad.”

It seemed Brittany’s cult was really pretty serious about the faux-ancient faux-Greek thing, at least if Santana’s knowledge of stereotypically Greek, vaguely old sounding diets was anything to go by.

“I don’t think that either,” she said. “When I was in high school, I just absolutely loved these breadsticks that a local restaurant offered for free.”

“Are breadsticks the wood that you use to make the fire to bake bread?”

“No, they’re these really thin and long bits of dough that have been baked until they’re hard.” Santana nudged at Brittany’s foot under the table. “They sell them in the grocery store, we can buy them sometime.”

Brittany nodded and chewed on her salad.

“Were you sad in high school?” she asked once she’d swallowed.

Santana frowned, her fork suspended in mid-air. “How so?”

“You always-“ Brittany bit her lip. “You always sound like that when you talk about it, like if you just tell it like it’s a funny story then it’ll actually be funny, but you don’t often laugh at it yourself.”

Santana looked down at her salad. “It wasn’t all bad,” she said eventually, looking up and mustering a smile at Brittany. “As much as I like to hate on Mr Schuester, I really loved glee, and a lot of those friends have lasted. They made it a lot better, especially in the later years.”

“But if it wasn’t all bad,” Brittany said, “that means some of it was bad.”

Santana bit her lip. “I was outed to the whole of Ohio in my senior year. And I was pretty afraid in my closet before that. Plus, I wasn’t really the nicest person around. I mean, I’m not really nice now, but it was even worse then. If you ever come to my high school reunion, I bet you some of those people are still at least a little scared of me.”

“That’s their loss,” Brittany said and reached her hand out to lay it atop Santana’s. “You’re great, and I’m really happy that you want to be with me as much as I want to be with you. I didn’t think how great earth people would be when I came here, but now I know.”

Santana didn’t cry out of sentimentality, but she did swallow as she squeezed Brittany’s hand.

“I’m so glad we crossed paths,” she said. “I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if you hadn’t happened to be there when I walked past, or if I’d chosen a different route or-“

“I’m really glad, too,” Brittany said. “I can sort of even understand Zeus now. I never understood why he always ran after humans so, but if they were all like you, that would make sense. Although he was still really mean because he’s married, but still. And he never dated you, did he?”

“No.” Santana was pretty sure it was not a genuine question but a rhetorical one, but it never hurt to make sure. She thought for a while and then asked, “Would you like to tell me more about you growing up? I never- It all sounds so different to what I’m used to, and I want to know as much as there is to know about you.”

“Hermes already told you a lot about the people,” Brittany said. “That’s really the most interesting part. Otherwise it’s quite tiring to live in a temple, actually. I bought a book like that, once, because the girl on the cover was really beautiful and there were so many adverts for it in the shop, and it’s not like that at all because gods can be really selfish. Dad told me that even though mum told him he couldn’t tell how. Plus humans are a lot nicer to have sex with. Or actually I don’t know,” her brow furrowed, “it’s really great to have sex with you but maybe it’s just you and not that you’re human.”

“Can’t be that,” Santana said. “You’re really good, too, so that can’t be my special human quality.”

It couldn’t hurt to talk to Brittany in a language she understood, right? As fucked up as it was for a cult leader to create a cult where members were gods and the rest of the world was just humans to be ruled over, it obviously hadn’t created any sort of superiority complex or anything in Brittany, so now that she had left it all behind they might as well use that distinction.

“How about school?” she asked. “Did you study at home or was there some sort of god school?”

“I really hated the philosophers,” Brittany said. “Plato was really annoying, and Aphrodite says he was super tiring when he lived, too. But I read lots, and my mum read for me when I was younger until I learned myself. Gods are really good with languages, so I didn’t really have to study English.”

“Did you have many friends?”

Brittany chewed on her lip. “I’m so much younger than everyone else, and it’s really difficult to make friends with adults who have had thousands of years to make up all sorts of grudges against each other so that it’s a mine field to just have family dinner because there’ll be like ten people who get offended that they were not even invited.” She smiled at Santana. “I liked it, though, in a way. But you’re really my best friend. It’s so uncomplicated with you. And I really wouldn’t want to have sex with any of the others, either, so that’s a plus.”

Santana snorted. “I’m really glad about that.”

They finished their salads and soon enough Santana had her oysters in front of her while Brittany curiously lifted the upper part of her lasagne to look at the bolognese sauce.

“This looks weird. But in an interesting way.”

“It’s pretty good,” Santana said. “Or I think so, at least. Breadstix was an Italian place, or so they liked to say, so I know my lasagnes.”

Carefully, Brittany cut out a piece and pushed it into her mouth, chewing on it thoughtfully.

“It _is_ good,” she pronounced eventually, like the matter had been more serious than simply whether or not she enjoyed a dish. “That white thing looks like toothpaste, but it doesn’t taste like peppermint.”

“I think it’s made from milk,” Santana said. “But yeah, it looks a little iffy when you first look at it, but it’s still really nice.”

Brittany took another bite. “What are those, really?” she asked, with a nod to Santana’s plate. “I saw them sometimes but I don’t think I ever ate them, and I think once I was about to ask but then Hera began shouting and I thought it might be a good idea to be quiet for a while.”

Santana explained how they lived in the sea and didn’t really move, and how you shouldn’t eat the ones that didn’t open during cooking because they might be off, and she offered Brittany one to which Brittany responded with a forkful of lasagne, which was indeed very good.

“I think someone told me once that oysters are a very sexual food,” Santana said, taking a moment to enjoy the fact that she could say such things out loud to Brittany. “I’m pretty sure that was someone who didn’t have to wonder where to put the shells on their plate so that they could see if there are any left, though.”

“You taste better,” Brittany said. “They feel funny in my mouth. Nice, but funny. With you, I don’t even have the time to think so hard about it because I like it so much. If you can think so much then it isn’t as good as you’re trying to make it out to be.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad you aren’t leaving me for a restaurant.”

“Nope.” Brittany smiled brightly at her. “I’d much rather leave the restaurant with you.”

“That’s a good idea.” Santana speared what was probably the last fusilli on her plate. “Do you want dessert or are we leaving now?”

Brittany seemed to consider the question seriously. “I like sex better than I like brownies,” she said. “But I already know that I can have sex whenever we get back home, and I do like brownies as well. And they smelled really good when the waiter took some past us. I think I’d like dessert. But then sex after that.”

“That’s an excellent plan.”

They didn’t have to think about their orders for a very long time; Brittany asked for the brownie with ice cream and fudge sauce as soon as the waitress brought them the dessert menu, and Santana only needed a few seconds to decide on the mudcake.

Once they got their plates, they swapped spoonfuls and Santana almost regretted not asking to get their desserts to go when she saw Brittany lick at the spoon.

“This is the best mud I’ve ever had,” Brittany said once she’d swallowed. “I had a mud bath once and some of it got into my mouth, but it wasn’t nearly as good at all.”

“It’s not really mud at all, they just call it that because it looks the same.” Santana licked a stray bit of fudge sauce off her lip. “Yours is delicious as well.”

“I know,” Brittany said happily as she dug her spoon deep into her portion.

They ate mostly in silence, but after a few minutes Brittany’s foot began to move against Santana’s, her ankle running up Santana’s calf.

“The brownie’s really delicious, but I still can’t wait for us to get home.”

Santana gave her a smirk. “Neither can I, Brit-Brit, neither can I.”

They didn’t take a taxi home, because after she’d got over her initial wariness, Brittany had really grown to like the underground and in any case Santana didn’t want to have too much money used on her behalf. By the time they got to Brittany’s building, they were already giggling and holding hands, and Santana had just the time to check that the door locked after them before Brittany pushed her against the wall for a passionate kiss.

During the few months they’d been together, Santana had had a lot of time to get used to making out with Brittany, but the pleasant, happy feeling it caused in her still managed to always come as a surprise. She’d dated before, and it had always been nice, but with Brittany, everything just felt a little _more_ (she couldn’t really define more like what it was) than before.  The sweet, innocent kisses were sweeter; the deeply romantic ones that she’d always thought only happened in straight romance novels when the couple got together were actually a thing in her life; the passionate ones that hinted at more, despite being newer than other types, were even more scorching hot.

Brittany’s hat fell to the floor, and soon enough Brittany pulled away to give Santana a look that obviously sought permission, her fingers toying with the zipper of Santana’s dress.

“God yes,” Santana said before moving to kiss along Brittany’s jaw.

Both of their dresses, along with Brittany’s wooden bracelets and Santana’s heels, stayed on the floor as they themselves moved to the bedroom (Santana had no idea who’d first glorified the idea of having sex against a wall, but she had standards and they both deserved better).

“You look great in underwear,” Brittany said. “You look great in dresses and stuff, too, but you look really great in underwear. And I like how it’s only me who gets to see you like that. Is that selfish?”

“I don’t care if it is, I really like that you find me hot.”

Hot or not, soon enough even the underwear got too much for them.

“You do look great naked as well,” Brittany said like she was afraid Santana would misconstrue her earlier words. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it out loud. But I think it very loudly whenever we do our ladytime.”

“I know.” Santana pressed a kiss against Brittany’s shoulder. “You, too.”

One of the things Santana loved best about sex with Brittany was how incredibly excited and enthusiastic Brittany got, every single time without fault. It wasn’t that she’d ever really had sex with someone utterly uninterested in it, but there was still something utterly special and novel about Brittany’s eagerness.

Of course, Santana couldn’t quite mentally run fast enough to escape the realisation that the goodness of the sex didn’t really come from how objectively good it was, but from how much she felt for Brittany, compared to how she’d felt for her previous girlfriends.

She wondered what a sixteen-year-old Santana would have thought if she knew that just some years later, she would be in New York City, moaning as the woman she loved licked at her vulva and teased at her with her fingers. Or that all that attention to her nails, keeping them nicely filed short and neat, would pay off in the form of wonderful fingering possibilities.

Having got used to sex, it hadn’t taken long for Brittany to get rather loud, which really made Santana glad she’d opted not to have roommates because unlike some (speaking of sixteen-year-olds, she’d never realised Kurt Hummel even had it in him), she generally had the decency not to be audible from another room and she’d have sorely mourned the decreased possibilities for making Brittany feel so good she wanted to make those noises.

“I’m kind of mad at my mum,” Brittany said, thankfully only after they were both sated and lazily cuddling under the covers.

“Why?”

“She didn’t want me to know about any of this because she thought the family name was marked enough with dad and my sister.” Brittany paused to think. “Then again, I really like learning with you. Maybe I shouldn’t be mad.”

“I don’t know your mum,” Santana said, “but she was probably thinking about what’s best for you. I had sex the first time when I was pretty young, and thinking back I fucking hate almost every single person I had it with.”

“I’m glad you don’t hate me.” Brittany kissed Santana’s cheek. “And I’m also pretty sure that if my mum hadn’t let me come explore the world on my birthday, I wouldn’t have met you, so I can’t really be mad at her. And I miss her and I don’t want to be mad at her.”

“Has she promised to visit you or something? It seems sort of weird that Hermes has dropped by to see you but your own parents haven’t.”

“They’re busy,” Brittany said. “They often get busy. And I told them I want to see the world for myself, so I guess they just don’t want to make me feel like they’re looking over my shoulder, which is pretty ridiculous because they don’t even really know what I’m doing so how could they know where my shoulder is.”

“I’m sure they’ll drop by sometime.” Santana carded her hand through Brittany’s hair for comfort. “Do they get out of your cu- Olympus a lot?”

“Dad comes a lot, but he has people he needs to match up so it makes sense. Mum doesn’t really like to, because it reminds her of her life before she married dad and it makes her sad because all of those people are gone now.”

Santana wanted to ask how old Brittany’s mum was, but it seemed like an odd question and so she didn’t.

“You could write them,” she suggested after a short silence. “My mum made me send her post cards from the Big Apple almost weekly when I first came here, and then she hung them on the fridge like I was in elementary school again, I was almost embarrassed to go home for Christmas. I’m sure your parents would love to hear from you.”

The idea seemed to cheer Brittany up.

“I could make them a unicorn card,” she said. “Kurt would borrow me some of his glitter, I’m sure. It would be great, and then he’d probably feel like he has to offer me some of his cookies.”

“That’s a great plan,” Santana said. “You should ask him.”

“Tomorrow.” Brittany snuggled closer to Santana. “I don’t really want to think of Kurt when I could just be cuddling you.”

Santana laughed into Brittany’s hair and closed her eyes. “Glad to hear that.”

\---

Mercedes arrived on a red-eye and Santana didn’t see her until after her classes and a short shift at Spotlight Diner. She came home to find Mercedes’s bags in the middle of the living room, Kurt and Mercedes by the kitchen table in animated conversation, and herself in a tight hug as soon as Mercedes spotted her.

“Great to see you,” she said as they pulled away.

“Same to you,” Mercedes said. “And before you have the time to weasel out of it, Kurt and I invited Blaine and Brittany over for dinner tonight.”

Santana smirked. “Why’d I want to weasel out of it? I take it Kurt’s cooking, and he makes up for the obnoxious amount of space his hair care products take in the bathroom by being a great cook.”

Mercedes raised an eyebrow. “Brittany must really be something. I don’t think you’ve ever been this willing to have your friends meet your girlfriend.”

Santana couldn’t help the smile. “Yeah. She really is something.”

“She is,” Kurt butted in. “Among other things, really nice and helpful. Take a note, Santana.”

He thrust a kettle into her arms.

Grudgingly, Santana cut carrots into it until Kurt got distracted enough listening to Mercedes that he didn’t notice when Santana passed it to him and then just went to lounge on the sofa.

“How’s the recording going?” she asked.

Mercedes’s face lit up. “It’s not quite a done deal yet,” she said, in a tone of voice that told Santana it probably was as good as one, “but it might be that within a year, you’ll be looking at an actual recorded artist. And I’m not talking about back-up on some B-list white rapper’s comeback single.”

“That’s great!” Santana said at the same time as Kurt let out an excited, “Wonderful!” and probably spilled a little sauce on his apron.

“It’s still in negotiations.” Mercedes looked down at her hands, but she was smiling as wide as Kurt and Santana.

At that point, Kurt realised Santana was slacking and told her to check on the potatoes, but Mercedes’s news had put Santana on such a good mood that she didn’t even really mind.

At seven on the dot, there was a knock on the door, Blaine being politely punctual as always. Behind him, looking up at the mould on the ceiling and muttering something about leprechauns, stood Brittany.

“Hi Santana,” Blaine said before turning to Brittany and also looking up at the ceiling. “Maybe they gather it, though,” he said. “It looks like the same green, and most moulds are poisonous but maybe leprechauns have different standards for that.”

“Maybe.” Brittany lowered her gaze and smiled at Santana, jumping forwards to hug her. “We were just wondering why leprechauns have the same colour in their clothes as there’s on the ceiling.”

Santana rested her chin on Brittany’s shoulder and glanced up at the mould stain. “I like Blaine’s theory,” she said. “Leprechauns are creepy fuckers; I wouldn’t put it past them to dye their clothes in mould.”

“We could leave out a note and ask.”

Santana gave her a soft smile. “Maybe after dinner.”

As Santana closed the door after them, she noticed Mercedes separating herself from her conversation with Kurt and taking a few steps towards them.

“Hello,” Blaine said, walking up to her and offering his hand for shaking. “You must be Mercedes. Kurt’s told me so much about you.”

Mercedes’s smile was definitely wider than her face, Santana would swear on it. “Not as much as he’s told _me_ about _you_. Nice to meet you, Blaine.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Mercedes did actually shake his hand, after which Blaine made a beeline for Kurt and Mercedes turned to Santana and Brittany, whose hand was still hanging around Santana’s shoulders from the hug.

“Brittany, this is Mercedes,” Santana said. “Mercedes, Brittany.”

“Hi.” Brittany beamed at Mercedes. “You look as sunny and pretty as Santana says you are.”

There was just the smallest hint of frown that made it to Mercedes’s face before it was squashed by a smile.

“Thank you,” Mercedes said. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen Santana look as sunny as when she talks about you.”

If possible, Brittany’s smile widened a little, and she glanced at Santana, her eyes bright. “I like making her sunny. When it rains for her I get wet too. And not the nice way.”

This time, Mercedes wasn’t quite as quick at hiding her surprise and while Brittany was not the quickest at picking up things like that, the moment was well on its way to becoming supremely awkward. Santana tried to come up with an exit strategy for all of them, but before she could open her mouth (to say anything, even to offer them all up for Kurt to do her grunt work in the kitchen), Mercedes laughed.

“From what I remember from high school, when it rains for Santana, she makes it storm for everyone else, so I’m pretty sure all of her classmates, friends and Kurt should bake you a thousand cakes.”

“I heard that!” Kurt butted in from the kitchen. “And I’m right in the middle of baking you all one, so think before you speak or I’ll eat it all myself.”

“I like cake,” Brittany said. “But I think I like making Santana happy even better. Her smile is even sweeter than cake, you know?”

Mercedes quirked an eyebrow, but she was somehow managing to smile at the same time without looking ridiculous. “I sort of don’t, but I think I know what you mean. That’s how I feel about Sam. He’s my boyfriend.”

Brittany nodded, and Santana let out a very discreet sigh of relief. She had told Brittany about Sam, but considering what she’d said, she wouldn’t have been surprised if Brittany had loudly and happily, in that way that only she managed to pull off, said, “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him! How’s his trouty mouth doing?” and Santana didn’t really want to rush right back into the awkward moment they’d just avoided.

The conversation turned to Brittany’s dancing and Mercedes’s singing, and a little later on to Kurt’s cooking as all they all sat down at the table and began eating it. Mercedes got another moment to shine as she told Blaine and Brittany about what she was actually doing in LA, getting once again the excited reactions and congratulations she well deserved. Towards the end of dessert (the cake really was very good; Santana would have to brainstorm a bit to come up with a way to actually get Kurt to make her a thousand), Blaine mentioned something about not being able to wait to hear Mercedes sing, which Kurt (of course he would; Santana didn’t even bother to sigh but brushed her foot against Brittany’s under the table instead) took as an invitation to suggest that Mercedes give them all a little teaser, graciously volunteering Blaine as her back-up piano. (Santana should have known to say a very firm no to that particular interior design decision, but she hadn’t sensed the danger back when Kurt dragged it in because Kurt hadn’t played in years.)

She stole the last piece of cake onto her plate, followed Brittany to the sofa and cuddled against her side as Blaine sat down by the piano and Mercedes began suggesting songs.

It came as a surprise to no one (except maybe Mercedes, but she didn’t know Blaine yet) that Blaine did in fact know half of Mercedes’s favourites from memory.

The surprise concert wasn’t so bad, maybe. Mercedes did have a wonderful voice, as she’d always had, and there were worse things that could happen on a partial New Directions reunion dinner than getting to cuddle her girlfriend while listening to an assortment of mostly love songs. Even if she could see the tears in the accompanist’s eyes by the end of the fourth song.

“Save your smitten eyes for Hummel, Anderson,” she said after the third song. “She’s taken.”

Blaine laughed it off good-naturedly as was his wont, but Kurt did glare at Santana from besides the piano, and Santana took great pleasure in smirking at him in the most annoying way she knew.

“I think that’s enough for me,” Mercedes said. “I’m not quite Rachel yet.”

“You should duet with Santana.” Brittany twisted around to look at Santana. “You said you two had the best duets.”

“We definitely did.”

“I’m game,” Mercedes said with a lop-sided smile before she leaned down to whisper something in Blaine’s ear.

Blaine nodded and began playing.

Santana had carefully cultivated an image where she was not one of the glee kids who were looking for any excuse to burst into song, but dammit, she did like dueting with Mercedes and she’d long ago realised she was very bad at saying no to Brittany in any way whatsoever.

There was no reason whatsoever for her to actually get off the couch and join Mercedes by the piano – they didn’t have microphones – but as nice as it was to cuddle up to Brittany, there was also a particular joy to singing like that, not quite so informally. Plus, she hadn’t actually sung in front of Brittany yet, and it never hurt to show off some of her more rarely used assets as well.

And anyway, it took Brittany less than two verses to jump up and start dancing next to them, not quite with Santana but definitely engaging her in the dance as well, so it wasn’t like she’d actually lost that much. Or at all.

“You’re a great dancer Brittany,” Mercedes said once the song was over and they’d all returned to the sofa to let Kurt and Blaine start on a duet of their own.

Brittany beamed. “Thank you.”

For a moment, Mercedes looked like she was about to say something else on the subject, but then she seemed to reconsider. “Have you danced for long?”

“With my father for all my life,” Brittany said. “But I started lessons a few months ago, and Mike’s a lot better teacher because he doesn’t talk about philosophy and stuff while he’s supposed to teach new moves.”

“How long are you here?” Santana asked. “Brittany’s actually going to be part of Mike’s what’s-it school project dance show next Wednesday.”

“My flight’s Thursday morning.” Mercedes flashed Brittany a smile. “I’d love to come see the show.”

Brittany did one of her little excited sitting-down jumps. “In that case, I’d love it if you came to see it.”

“It’s a deal.”

As Kurt and Blaine finished their duet, Blaine asked Brittany to sing next, and Brittany was all too happy to oblige. She wasn’t necessarily that skilled a singer, but she did great on speedy pop songs, and somehow Blaine realised that and suggested Britney Spears (either he had a really creepy sixth sense for people’s musical talents, or then he’d taken Brittany to karaoke sometime; Santana assumed both).

Santana got lost in her own thoughts looking at Brittany, dancing again while still managing to keep up with the singing. It was hard to believe it had only been months since they’d met.

Next to her, Mercedes chuckled.

“You know,” she said. “If anyone here’s completely smitten, it’s you.”

“Shut up,” Santana muttered, shoving a pillow against Mercedes’s side, but she couldn’t claim it wasn’t true.

\---

“Stop fidgeting!”

Santana pushed her elbow against Kurt’s side, not with much force, but she hoped Kurt got the message anyway.

“I’m not fidgeting!”

“You so are,” Mercedes said. “My body’s vibrating just because my seat’s connected to yours. That creepy guy over there can’t stop staring at my bouncing boobs.”

Begrudgingly, with another mean look at Kurt, Santana stopped moving.

“It’s okay to be nervous.” Blaine gave her an encouraging smile from where he was sitting on Kurt’s right. “She’s going to do great.”

“I know.” Santana let herself lean more heavily on the backrest of her seat. “I’m just- I want everyone to see how amazing she is and I’ll still have to wait fifteen minutes before the whole thing even _begins_.”

Kurt groaned. “Why do I even go anywhere with you, you’re like a damn five-year-old?”

“Because when I don’t care, you love to complain with me.”

“Touché.”

“Well, I think it’s really sweet,” Blaine said. “I’m sure Brittany appreciates your interest in the stuff she likes.”

Santana made a noncommittal noise and turned to Mercedes, because there was no way Kurt wasn’t going to turn that into some sort of sweet lovefest between him and Blaine, and Santana wasn’t interested in watching.

“I just want everything to go off really well.”

“It will,” Mercedes said, nudging Santana’s shoulder with her own. “I’ve seen Brittany dance, and she’s great. And I’ve heard her talk about this Mike guy and the other dancers, and from what I’ve heard I take they’re great, too. It’s going to go great, Santana. Stop worrying and prepare to enjoy it, that’s what we’re here for.

“I don’t know how Sam does it,” Santana muttered. “Your gigs are getting bigger and bigger, and I’m sure he’s just there watching and smiling happily and doing your heavy lifting for you before, and not even getting the tiniest bit nervous, and it’s not fair.”

“You should see him before every job interview,” Mercedes said. “Last time, he somehow managed to break a plastic cup while making breakfast. Aim a little higher than him if you’re trying for cool and collected.”

Santana grumbled and turned her gaze on the empty stage. It seemed she couldn’t win, whichever side she looked to.

Time passes surprisingly quickly when you’re sulking, and luckily for Santana’s nerves, Brittany was in the opening number. It was a choreography Santana had seen before, but it was quite a different experience to see a group of ten do it on stage in matching costumes than to see Brittany practice the hardest parts in her own living room in just her underwear (not a better experience, necessarily; just very different). Santana didn’t really know much about dancing; her experience was limited to being in glee and trying to deal with Mr Schuester’s utter inability to plan a routine. She assumed it was something modern-ish, mostly because she couldn’t predict anything what happened. That didn’t change the fact that it was good; very good, in fact.

Santana took a deep breath and forced her leg to stay still. She was here to enjoy Brittany’s show, she reminded herself; she should really start working on the part where she let go of her anxiety and actually enjoyed it like she was supposed to.

The end of the routine garnered loud applause from the audience; a blonde man sitting a few rows ahead of Santana and her friends even stood up to whistle and seemed like he was about to shout something before a woman to her right, another blonde and probably his wife or something like that, pulled him down with a few stern words.

The next number was just Mike. It was good, Santana had to admit, but it didn’t come as a surprise that it didn’t hold her attention like the previous number.

There was another group number, then a smaller group, then Mike alone again, then Mike, Brittany and a woman Santana didn’t know but assumed was Rita from Brittany’s excited explanations about the three of them practicing.

The final number had the whole group on stage again, and by that time, Santana was fully relaxed and able to just watch and enjoy the show. As the number came to an end and the dancers moved into a row for the final bow, the whole audience burst into applause again; this time, the blonde man’s wife didn’t manage to scold him into submission before he’d yelled out, “Bravo! Wonderful! Utterly-“ at which point he got a fist in his mouth for his troubles. (Literally. Santana shook her head in disgust and hoped Brittany didn’t look at her from the stage right then.)

After the performers left the stage, the audience began slowly filing out of the room. Kurt suggested that they go out to have a bite (Santana’s question of whether he was angling for pizza or cheesecake went unanswered, which probably meant both), and Mercedes and Blaine admitted that they were a little hungry as well.

“You go ahead,” Santana said. “Brits and I will come as soon as she’s changed.”

Kurt nodded. “I’ll text you the place.”

It wasn’t a Broadway show, so there was practically no one else at the performers’ door. Tina did pass by, but she went in to help Mike with something – probably cleaning up, which was why Santana didn’t elect to follow her – and soon enough, the other dancers began leaving. Santana said hi to those that she knew and just sort of glared at the ones she didn’t, hoping it didn’t look too impolite.

Finally, though, Brittany skipped out the door, humming a tone that sounded a lot like the music to the second group number to Santana, and practically jumped at Santana the moment she saw her.

“Wasn’t it good?” she asked. “Weren’t we great?”

“Yes,” Santana said with emphasis. “You were all great, and you in particular were absolutely amazing.”

Brittany beamed. “I hope Mum and Dad liked it, too.”

Santana had barely the time to register her own surprise before a very carrying voice shouted, “Brittany, my girl! You sure did make your father proud!”

They turned around, and sure enough, walking towards them and the performers’ entrance was a couple. In fact, the very same couple Santana had noticed during the show.

“Dad!” Brittany yelled and run to them, jumping at the man – her father – and hugging into him. The man had to take a step back to balance them both, Brittany’s legs around his lower torso, but they did stay up, and he hugged her with equal force.

The woman – Brittany’s mother – watched the scene with tears in her eyes (Santana noticed as she walked up to them) and, as Brittany dropped down from her father, enveloped her in an equally emotional hug.

“Mum, Dad,” Brittany said as they finally separated, taking a step back to take Santana’s hand, “this is my girlfriend Santana. Santana, these are my mum and dad.”

“Nice to meet you,” Santana offered, but Brittany’s mother stepped towards her and extended her hand. Luckily, Brittany was holding on to Santana’s left hand, so Santana didn’t have to break the hold as she took Brittany’s mother’s hand.

“Nice to meet you, too, Santana,” Brittany’s mother said. “You can call me Psyche.”

Santana smiled instead of frowning. Well, at least it seemed that Brittany’s cult was not crazy homophobic. There was that at least.

“And I am Eros,” Brittany’s father said, offering Santana his hand after Brittany’s mother let go.

“Brittany’s told us so much about you,” Psyche said. “It was very kind of you to help her so much when we forgot a lot of important things.” She shook her head. “I cannot believe how much the world has changed.”

“You can’t remember everything, Mum.” Brittany patted her mother on the shoulder. “And I know that you were really sad that I wanted to go anyway. It’s fine; I found Santana and that’s the best thing. Papers are dull and they don’t talk back.”

Eros smirked. “I bet they also don’t do a lot of other things.”

Brittany’s face lit up. “I know now what you mean, Dad! You mean I can’t-“

Psyche glanced at Santana. “You probably don’t want to embarrass your girlfriend, Brittany. From what I gather, the mortal realm is not quite so open about these things. She probably didn’t expect your sex life to be a topic of conversation for her first meeting with your parents.”

Santana hoped she looked neutral and not as uncomfortable as she felt. “It was not the first thing I thought of, no.”

Brittany squeezed Santana’s hand and gave her a small smile. “You’re a lot better than a stack of papers whether or not we are going to talk about how.”

If they’d been alone, Santana would have leaned forwards to kiss Brittany, but tolerant parents or not, she was not going to risk that in front of Eros and Psyche.

“You’re even better.”

“That is so cute,” Eros said, and if he’d been someone else besides Brittany’s father, Santana would have raised an eyebrow and asked him if he was secretly fifteen. But he was, so she didn’t. “You’re making me sad that no one believes in me anymore and I can’t actually use my powers. Otherwise I’d put an arrow through the two of you in a heartbeat.”

Santana heard her own gasp before she realised it was going to happen, and took an instinctive step away from Eros.

“You’d do what?”

So much for not homophobic, she guessed, glancing at the door behind her and Brittany. Mike and Tina had to come out at some point, and if they could just-

“Oh,” Brittany said. “I think I never told you because I just said that Dad has work. Ages ago, way before I was born, everyone believed that he could actually bring love so he had these magical arrows that he shot through people and then they fell in love. But now no one believes in him anymore so he just has to walk around and try to matchmake strangers by pushing them into each other’s laps and trying to get them to take the wrong suitcase in the airport and stuff like that.” Brittany frowned a little. “I never asked how the whole airport thing goes normally.”

Santana breathed a little easier, but she didn’t step back any closer. It was just another part of the cult mythology, she told herself. There had never been any arrows, just a harmless man trying to ineffectively arrange meet-cutes for strangers. Which probably was still creepy, but not so blatantly murderous.

“Maybe you should do a small trip with Santana and find out,” Psyche said. “Even if you’ve found a home here there’s nothing to stop you from seeing other places here as well.”

Brittany bit her lip. “Could I take here home to see the winged horses?”

Psyche probably thought she was being sneaky, but it was obvious that she let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, honey, that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. You know the rules about visitors. It’s probably better if you both stay here instead of try to come to Olympus.”

Brittany seemed to consider it. “I guess you’re right.” She rested her head against Santana’s shoulder. “I don’t want her to have to be so sad like you were.”

“Neither do I.”

Eros looked about as uncomfortable with the conversation than Santana felt (although she supposed the reasons were a lot different; from what she remembered, it was sort of his fault that Brittany’s mother had joined the cult in the first place), and soon enough he was looking at his (very expensive-looking golden) wristwatch.

“I think I told Hermes we’d be back soon,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of time today, but you seemed so excited about the dance show that we just couldn’t miss it. It was great to meet you, Santana.”

Brittany’s lip protruded. “You’ll visit soon again, won’t you?”

“Of course we will, darling,” Psyche said, stepping forwards and spreading her arms in an obvious plea for a hug which Brittany was all too glad to grant.

As Psyche moved to hug Santana, Santana watched past her shoulder as Eros pushed two fingers in his mouth (what was it with them and stuffing hands in there anyway?) and whistled loudly. Before Santana could even wonder why, there was a sound as if a hundred bats had flown past them, and then-

One moment Santana was standing in a quite regular New York alley, and then she was suddenly standing in a quite regular New York alley with a winged horse.

She’d heard of weeping angels, yeah, but she’d never thought _that_ might sometimes happen when she blinked.

No one else seemed to have registered her shock; Brittany’s parents mounted the winged horse like it was quite normal to them, and Brittany waved at them happily like she often saw her parents rise to the sky riding a mythical creature.

It was only when the horse had disappeared behind a skyscraper that Brittany turned to her and seemed to notice.

“Was that your first time seeing one?” she asked. “I thought that you don’t have them here, but I wasn’t quite sure and I never remembered to ask when I meant to.”

Despite her recent bad experiences with the activity in question, Santana blinked. “That wasn’t _your_ first time?”

Which was probably better than, ‘I didn’t dream that up?”

Brittany frowned. “No, there’s tons of them in Olympus. I rode one here. I thought I told you that.”

She had, in fact, but considering everything else she had told Santana, Santana had just assumed it was part of-

Oh god.

“Is it all true?” She had no idea how she was keeping upright; her head felt like it might explode. “Everything you told me, it’s literally true? Actually literally true”

“Do you think I would lie to you?” Brittany bit her lip and looked down at the ground, looking like Santana had- Well, Santana had just told her she’d never believed about half of the things Brittany had told her during their relationship, there probably was no point in trying to compare it to something else. “Why would I do that?”

Santana hastened to move her arms around Brittany to soothe her. “I didn’t think you’d lie to me, I just- You express yourself differently from anyone else I know, I guess I just… interpreted a huge part of it wrong. I’m sorry.”

Brittany didn’t look any happier, but at least she rested her forehead against Santana’s. “Does it matter? In all of those films that we watched together and with Kurt and Blaine they always said that talking is really important.” She let out a little, sad sigh, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. So if I’ve been talking wrong-“

“Hey,” Santana said, stroking Brittany’s side with her hand. “You haven’t been talking wrong, I just haven’t been listening very well.” There was probably no point to tell Brittany that neither would just about anyone else; this wasn’t about what anyone else would have done. This was about them. “It doesn’t change anything important. I still love you and-“

If she’d been blindly searching for something to cheer Brittany up, she’d found it.

“You love me?”

Santana bit her lip. Dammit, why did she always get bashful in situations like these. “Yeah. I do. For a while, actually, I’m just really bad at saying these th-”

She was interrupted as Brittany threw her arms around Santana, hugging her close. “I love you, too.”

They stood there for a while, just hugging each other, until Brittany pulled away just enough for them to look each other in the eyes again.

“So everything’s okay between us?”

“Yeah,” Santana said, butting her nose gently against Brittany’s. “Everything’s great.”

\---

It was some hours and a hastily written text message to Mercedes about how they most definitely would not be joining their friends in a pizzeria later that Santana and Brittany found themselves in Brittany’s bed cuddling, giggling and trading lazy kisses.

“Can I ask you something?” Brittany asked in between them.

“Of course.”

“If you didn’t even believe my stories about gods and winged horses and stuff, why were you so nice to me and helped me and then wanted to date me?”

Santana left out a soft giggle as Brittany’s leg brushed against her knee.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I guess it’s that even if I didn’t believe in ancient Greek gods, I always just believed in you, Brittany.”

Brittany ducked her head smiled. “I think I like that. I’m more special than all of them combined.”

“That you are, Brittany,” Santana said, leaning forwards for a new kiss. “That you very much are.”

Brittany had just enough time to mutter, “So are you,” before their lips touched, and after that, any thoughts of gods quickly disappeared from their heads.


End file.
